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"-- House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said on Sunday's \u201CUPFRONT with Mike Gousha\u201D that Congress will pass a measure to minimize damage from the sequester by giving President Obama flexibility in applying the budget cuts.Ryan said the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts represent just 2 percent of federal spending, and even with the cuts, federal spending will have increased 18 percent since 2008. The problem, he said, is with how the cuts are to be applied.\u201CSo what we're not talking about are deep cuts,\u201D the Janesville Republican said on the program, produced with WisPolitics.com. \u201CWhat's wrong about the sequester is its indiscriminate nature, its across-the-board nature.\u201DHe said the measure he'll advance will allow the president flexibility to apply the cuts instead to \u201Clow-priority and more wasteful\u201D programs.Ryan was critical of the president in his approach to the attempting to avert the sequester.\u201CI see the president doing all these press conferences around the country bringing attention to the sequester now in the last minute, in the final hours,\u201D Ryan said. \u201CLet's not forget he's the one who proposed the sequester, he's the one who designed the sequester in the first place.\u201CWe approved it because it was the president who insisted on doing it this way to allow the debt limit to increase before the election.\u201DHe said Obama isn't serious about achieving a \u201Cgrand bargain\u201D on deficit reduction, claiming the president has repeatedly moved the goal posts in discussions.\u201CThat tells me you're not as serious about legislating,\u201D Ryan said.At this point, Republicans won't agree to measures to close tax loopholes, Ryan said, as they already approved a tax increase and the president intends to use the revenue from closing loopholes to increase government spending, rather than to lower tax rates.The House Budget chair said he intends to bring a budget to the floor in two weeks that will eliminate the federal deficit in 10 years. He said while his plan will still increase federal spending every year, it will slow spending growth.\u201CNow in Washington, that's considered savage cuts,\u201D Ryan said. \u201CWe're saying, 'Let's get government to live within its means, let's slow the growth of spending.'\u201D\u2013 Ryan said his experience running for vice president has taught him a lot, but seeing the direction the country has taken after his ticket lost has been \u201Cdistressing.\u201D\u201CWe had great plans, and now to see where the president is taking this country, the difference in leadership ... that was a little distressing to see,\u201D Ryan said.But Ryan said it has been \u201Crefreshing\u201D to get back to his work in Congress and that his family life has mostly returned to normal.He said he's more focused now on immediate concerns before Congress than a possible 2016 presidential run.--Also on the program, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Minority Leader Peter Barca debated mining legislation, voucher school expansion and the governor's proposed tax cuts.Vos said the mining bill, all but certain to pass the Assembly Thursday and head Gov. Scott Walker's signature, will help create jobs in the state while protecting the environment.Barca said the bill will set the stage for lawsuits, adding the Legislature would have done better to pass a bipartisan proposal based on Minnesota's laws.Vos said it's likely the school choice program will see some level of expansion but added he'd like full statewide expansion. But Barca noted opposition to it from several Republican senators and argued any measure that passes should require a local referendum to approve the program in a district.Vos said the expansion won't include a referendum component, as that would put the needs of a few families having problems with public schools up against teachers unions and \u201Cthose that protect the status quo.\u201DBarca argued without a referendum, the Legislature would be giving Walker the power to \u201Cbe like a monarch\u201D and impose the expansion on a district.Barca said that the budget would \u201Cstarve\u201D public schools, while the state boosts funding to the voucher program. But Vos noted that the governor's budget includes an over $100 million increase for public schools.On the governor's tax cut proposal, Vos said he supports the income tax cut but hopes to make it bigger by eliminating loopholes. Barca said he would like to see the tax cut more focused on the middle class.-- Gousha said the beauty of the landscape in northern Wisconsin sometimes overshadows high unemployment rates there.VIDEO: High unemployment in northern WisconsinWatch the program: www.wisn.com/politics/upfront"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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