House Minority Leader John Boehner has picked Reps. Dave Camp (R-MI), Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) to sit on President Obama’s 18-member deficit-reduction panel.
That’s right — Paul Ryan of the entitlement-slashing GOP shadow budget. And Jeb Hensarling, the Republican who suggested on Hardball last month that we should privatize Social Security.
Ryan’s selection is quite a step for Republicans to take — especially considering the great lengths they’ve gone to in recent weeks to distance themselves from his plan. Naming Ryan to a commission charged with coming up with ideas for reducing the nation’s deficit would seem to be an endorsement of sorts of Ryan’s ideas — and also seems to undermine GOP attempts to distance the party from Ryan’s slash-and-privatize plan.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has also named Sens. Judd Gregg (R-NH), Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) to the debt commission.
Late Update: Doug Thornell, spokesman to Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), sends over this statement on the GOP announcements.
It speaks volumes about the GOP agenda for America that the three House Republican members named to the Deficit Commission strongly support privatizing Social Security and all voted last year to dismantle Medicare as we know it.
