April 11, 2011 10:10 PM UTC

Tipton--Already Waffling on "Ryan Plan?"

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Pueblo Chieftain’s Peter Roper reports–should have read it first, don’t you think?

Rep. Scott Tipton, the freshman Republican who represents Pueblo and the 3rd Congressional District, held his own telephone town hall meeting Thursday night and said most of the calls he received agreed the federal government is overspending and that has to change.

“Everyone understands that we’re facing a $14.3 trillion national debt,” Tipton said Friday, hours before a historic budget deal was reached. “We’re getting ready to raise the debt limit again by another $1.3 trillion. We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.”

…A handful of Democratic protesters showed up at Tipton’s district office in Pueblo on Friday, offering a mock “thank you” card on behalf of wealthy voters. Specifically, they were faulting Tipton for his endorsement this week of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget plan, which many Republicans embraced as their future policy to rein in federal spending.

…Tipton said he likes the thrust of Ryan’s plan, not necessarily its particulars. [Pols emphasis] The most dramatic proposals it contains would privatize Medicare for future retirees.

First off, let’s clarify something very simple: Rep. Scott Tipton’s first-ever legislation in Congress, recently introduced, is a massive corporate and capital gains tax cut we discussed in this space a couple of weeks ago. You can engage in all of the chicken and egg debates about revenues vs. spending that you want, but there’s very little to debate regarding the effect of slashing corporate tax rates to 10%–that’s the revenue side of the, um, “problem,” isn’t it?

But set that contradiction aside for a moment. Before we can get to reconciling Rep. Tipton’s statements with his actions in Congress, we really need to know: what “particulars” of the Paul Ryan 2012 budget plan, the plan he glowingly endorsed in a press release last week unlike other, perhaps more cautious Republicans–note how Tipton specifically praised the “$6.2 trillion in budget cuts”–what exactly in the Ryan budget is not part of the “thrust” Tipton favors?

Is it Medicare privatization? Historic cuts to education? Roads? Food safety? Which is it?

Because it sure looks to us, as with Tipton’s ridiculous campaign pledge to “cut the government in half,” or voting to “repeal Obamacare” while painfully clarifying that he doesn’t have the slightest idea what he is talking about, like this could be about to get embarrassing. Or maybe Tipton realizes that it already has, and he’s leaving bread crumbs for a way out.

Either way–maybe a reporter will demand a real answer? We’d love to see it, since it’s our understanding this “future of America” thing they’re debating is important and stuff.