Ryan On Medicare Cuts: "We Would Never Have Done It In The First Place"

He explains why he included in his budget cuts to planned spending that he's now running against.

Paul Ryan expanded on his position on cuts a $716 billion cut to the expected growth of Medicare today during a stop for lunch in Ohio, arguing that he had priced it into his budget only because it had already been included in President Obama's health care overhaul and thus in the "baseline," and said he would not otherwise have supported it.

"We didn't propose it," Ryan said, according to a pool report. "It was in the baseline. And when we voted to repeal Obamacare we voted to repeal all of it."

A reporter, Yahoo!'s Chris Moody, said he had asked Ryan about the program, a question he later paraphrased as: "You're criticizing President Obama right now for taking money from Medicare to pay for Obamacare. But your budget plan includes those cuts. What's your response to that? "

Ryan responded:

First of all, those are in the baseline, he put those cuts in. Second of all, we voted to repeal Obamacare repeatedly, including those cuts. I voted that way before the budget, I voted that way after the budget. So when you repeal all of Obamacare what you end up doing is that repeals that as well. In our budget we've restored a lot of that. It gets a little wonky but it was already in the baseline. We would never have done it in the first place. We voted to repeal the whole bill. I just don't think the president's going to be able to get out of the fact that he took $716 billion from Medicare to pay for Obamacare."

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