Rep. Paul Ryan said Sunday that S&P's downgrade of U.S. credit was a "vindication" Republican actions and his budget plan, which would end Medicare as it exists today.
"I am not very surprised with the downgrade," Ryan told Fox News' Chris Wallace. "We more or less saw it coming because we are the wrong fiscal path. We'll find out what spike in rates we are going to get. Obviously not only does it hurt the federal government and its ability to close deficits, but it hurts people. Car loans, home loans, all these things are going to go up. And so, it is because Washington has not gotten its fiscal house in order."
And to me, this is just more vindication of our actions. We passed a budget, which according to someone with S&P yesterday, would have prevented the downgrading from happening in the first place."
"Isn't that like a doctor saying, 'I did the operation perfectly but the patient died?'" Wallace wondered. "In its announcement, S&P condemned the political dysfunction here in Washington, the grid lock here in Washington... isn't the failure to compromise part of the problem?"
"Both political parties are responsible for the mess we have right," Ryan admitted. "This is not a Democrat or Republican problem only. Both parties got us to where we are. I would argue, though, in the last couple of years, we've gone deeply in the wrong direction."
"Yes, we haven't been able to get the kind of compromise because our partners on the other side of the ailes had been unwilling to reform the [entitlement] programs that the cause of the problem."
The Huffington Post's Jason Linkins questioned Sunday what sort of vindication Ryan had been claiming.
"Yes, it was those actions, debt ceiling hostage-taking that led to the downgrade. And the end result of the negotiations was massive budgetary austerity," Linkins wrote.
