I detect artistic license

Every good drama needs a cliffhanger. And the federal budget is approaching the mother of them all. (AP image)

I like conventions. They’re the only TV show where the audience just sits and listens to speeches. But like any dramatic performance, a good speech requires artistic license.

And Paul Ryan was very good at that, for example, talking about the President’s Debt Commission:

“They came back with an urgent report he thanked them sent them on their way and then did exactly nothing,” Ryan said in his GOP convention speech.

But if I may insert a dramatic flashback, there’s a clip from December 2010, where Paul Ryan explains to a breakfast meeting that he himself was voting against the urgent report of that same debt commission:

“So obviously I’m not going to vote for it. The reason I can’t vote for the thing is because it not only didn’t address the elephant in the room, health care, it made it fatter,” Ryan said.

It made health care fatter, he said in 2010. But, jumping back now into the present, here’s what he said last night about health care, specifically Medicare:

“A Romney, Ryan administration will protect and strengthen
Medicare for my mom’s generation, for my generation and for my kids and yours,” Ryan said.

Now, it depends on the definition of “strengthen”. But if we define it as providing more services than it does now, and covering every generation equally, does that sound less fat? Maybe if doctors and nurses take huge pay cuts. Otherwise you’d have to raise taxes, which Ryan has signed a pledge not to do.

So it remains a mystery. But every good drama needs a cliffhanger. And the federal budget is approaching the mother of them all.

Listen to Dave’s commentary: