Republicans remain tethered to Paul Ryan’s fiscal vision

Paul Ryan, in a box?

By Greg Sargent, WashPost, Updated: April 17, 2013

A number of folks have been observing an interesting dynamic among House Republicans: After spending years attacking Democrats for failing to produce a budget, the fact that Senate Dems have done just that has put them in a political bind. Brian Beutler explains:

Instead of promptly appointing negotiators to convene a so-called conference committee and iron out the differences between the wildly different House and Senate budgets, House Republicans are eager to either return to the smoke-filled back rooms of legend, or kill the budget process altogether.

“We want to go to conference when we feel we have a realistic chance of getting an agreement,” Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP’s top budgeter, told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday, saying he wants members of both parties to take a detour and agree to a pre-conference “framework” before resuming formal negotiations. [...]

To explain the about-face, consider what happens if conferees begin meeting and negotiating right away. In this phase of regular order, leadership has less control over the course of events, and pretty much everything is majority rule. Democratic negotiators will be able to relitigate the fight they won in the election. They’ll agree to entitlement spending cuts. They might even reluctantly embrace a provision in President Obama’s budget — chained CPI — that would among other things slow the growth of Social Security benefits. But only if Republicans agree to ditch the anti-tax absolutism.

Republicans would thus be forced to choose between agreeing to new taxes and triggering a huge conservative revolt; or exacerbating the public’s sense that their party is pathologically unable to compromise.

(More here.)