TPM Editor’s Blog

See No Evil, Budget No Evil …

See No Evil, Budget No Evil …

This is pretty classic. A week ago GOP Rep. Jeb Hensarling (TX) was telling Chris Matthews about the glories of the House Republicans’ draft 2010 budget, filled with plans to cut and privatize Social Security and abolish Medicare. But as news began to spread this week about the draft plan prepared by chief House Republican budgeteer Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the Republican leadership, especially Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) started acting like they barely knew anything about it.

That brings us up to today, when Republicans sent Rep. Hensarling to give the response to the president’s Saturday radio address. So what he say about the draft Ryan plan?

Not much. Hensarling for some reason used the whole time to talk about House Republicans’ 2009 budget. In other words, an outline plan from last year about the year that already happened and was actually panned at the time for not including any details and even including a lot of fake charts.

So what’s the deal? The House GOP is getting behind a budget which calls for partial abolition of Social Security and full abolition of Medicare. And they’re on the air talking about last year’s budget? Maybe Obama should talk about the Clinton surpluses? What’s the big need to hide what they’re actually proposing for next year?

Josh Marshall

Josh Marshall is editor and publisher of TalkingPointsMemo.com.

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