WASHINGTON -- Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Sunday that he had made a mistake last week in asserting that senior military leaders did not support the Pentagon budget request made by President Barack Obama.
"The military is a little offended by your words," Candy Crowley told him on CNN's "State of the Union."
"I really misspoke, to be candid with you, Candy. I didn't mean to make that kind of an impression," Ryan replied. "So I was clumsy in how I was describing the point I was trying to make."
Last week, Ryan, the author of the House GOP's proposed federal budget that passed the lower chamber Thursday on a party-line vote, had said he did not necessarily believe that military leaders were behind the $525 billion Defense Department budget proposed by the president for fiscal 2013. That proposal would be down from a $530 billion enacted budget for 2012.
"We don't think the generals are giving us their true advice," Ryan had said, according to Politico. "We don't think the generals believe their budget is really the right budget."
Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took issue with those comments.
"There’s a difference between having someone say they don't believe what you said versus ... calling us, collectively, liars," the general told reporters on Thursday, according to the Wall Street Journal. "My response is: I stand by my testimony. This was very much a strategy-driven process to which we mapped the budget."
Ryan said Sunday that what he had been trying to say was that the administration had prioritized achieving a certain budget number over providing the funds to accommodate the correct military strategy.
"General Dempsey and I spoke after that, and I wanted to give that to him, which was that's not what I was attempting to say," Ryan said on CNN. "What I was attempting to say is that President Obama put out his budget number for the Pentagon first ... and then they began the strategy review to conform the budget to meet that number. We think it should have been the other way around."
Ryan also addressed the 2012 GOP primary race, just a few days after he had endorsed Mitt Romney for president and two days before his home state holds its primary.
"I think so," he said when asked whether the race would be over if Wisconsin goes to Romney. "If Mitt wins Wisconsin ... he gets a big delegate [haul], which I think he'll get. Then we believe, as conservatives, that we should coalesce around one candidate."
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And here’s last week’s big lie and mind Chris Wallace on Fox called him on it:
The House Republican budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan was the talk of the Sunday circuit, as Ryan and fellow Republicans tried to downplay the harm the proposal would do to just about everybody but the 1 percent. A particular focus, because of the political fall-out from last year's attempt at a Read More... budget, was Medicare. Here's Ryan on FOX News, misleading viewers on just what it is his plan would do.
WALLACE: The Congressional Budget Office says under your plan, by 2030, average government spending on each new Medicare enrollee would be $2,000 less than status quo. Wouldn't you just -- factually, wouldn't you make seniors pay more for Medicare and their health care than they do now?
RYAN: Those same numbers apply to President Obama's healthcare law. Medicare grows at the same -- under our budget as it does under Obamacare. Here is the key critical difference: the president's health care puts 15 bureaucrats in charge of Medicare. We put 50 million seniors in charge of their Medicare. He is putting these bureaucrats, unelected, unaccountable, in charge of price controlling, which leads to denied care for seniors.
Chris Wallace got that absolutely right, the Ryan plan would shift costs to those 50 million seniors who would be "in charge" of having to pay much more for their health care. And as health care costs rise, Ryan's cap would mean that seniors would have to pay more and more to make up the difference between what the private sector charges and what Medicare subsidizes.
Here's what else it would result in, according to the CBO: "reduced access to health care; diminished quality of care; increased efficiency of health care delivery; less investment in new, high-cost technologies; or some combination of those outcomes."
Paul Ryan isn’t sparing with the truth, he’s a committed liar.
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Posted: 04/ 1/2012 10:57 am Updated: 04/ 1/2012 1:45 pm