A leaner, meaner Ryan budget?

>>> welcome back to "the ed show." thanks for stay with us tonight. the most conservative members of the house got a gift from speaker boehner today. tea party republicans helped pass a bill extending the debt limit until mid-may. in return, both house and senate have got to pass a budget or their pay is going to be withheld. bottom line , the republicans just kicked the can down the road. they're still playing games with the debt ceiling. that's the bottom line there. in the meantime, representative paul ryan is back in the picture. he is stepping back into the political spotlight. he is now in charge of creating a budget that will eliminate the federal deficit within ten years? paul ryan was the guy who lost the last election because most americans didn't like his budget ideas in the first place. but now ryan claims voters actually didn't reject republican principles. ryan told "the wall street journal " we have to do a better job of explaining why we think our ideas are better for everybody and why they're better for fighting poverty. paul ryan wants us to believe that he can fight poverty, pay off the debt and balance the budget in a new number, now ten years. do you believe that? i got some swampland for you down in florida if you do. let's do some quick math here. analysts say ryan will have to cut about $800 billion in federal spending, including defense. that's 22% of the federal budget . so ryan would have to cut spending by one-fifth in ten years. those cuts go way beyond anything paul ryan suggested during the campaign. his old plan balanced the budget in 30 years. but he still wanted to cut programs for the poor by 62%. ryan 's old budget would have slashed federal medicaid funding by almost a third. paul ryan 's new budget plan will have to be leaner and meaner than the last one. but ryan claims the numbers will eventually add up.

>> this isn't a republican or a democratic thing. this is a math thing.

>> a math thing. let's turn to congressman chris van hollen , who is the ranking democratic member on the house budget committee . congressman, good to have you with us tonight.

>> ed, it's good to be with you. your analysis is spot-on.

>> although i do not have the swampland, i was just kidding on that one.

>> right.

>> what happened today on the debt ceiling? i mean, are we going to go through this again in another three, four months?

>> well, that's right. look, the little bit of good news here, ed, was that republicans recognized that the united states has to pay their bills. the bad news is they said, well, we only have to pay our bills as a country until may 19th . and so they've left this huge uncertainty hanging over the economy. we know that when they did this in 2011 , it produced the month with the lowest job growth . it meant that our credit rating got downgraded. so while republicans have spent the last couple of years saying we need more certainty in the economy, what they have done is put more uncertainty in the economy. that will hurt the economy. and in order to get their right wing tea party folks to even do that, to even extend the debt court of appealing to may 19th , they had to promise them that they were going to slash spending. and the only way to make the math work, i mean, paul ryan wants to talk about the math, the only way to make the math work in the way they approached the budget is to rescind and violate all the promises we made to our seniors, devastate medicaid, transfer rising health care costs on to seniors in medicare, cut investments in education that are important for our kids, all, by the way, all while protecting the tax breaks and loopholes for folks at the high end of the income scale.

>> you know, my question for ryan would be, and of course to you, the republicans aren't going to go along with these kinds of cuts in defense. i mean, i think the democrats would certainly pare back on defense spending . but the republicans -- so isn't this somewhat of a phantom budget that he is trying to throw out right now?

>> well, that's exactly right. look, republicans have said for the last couple of months that the across-the-board cuts to defense spending are reckless. and democrats have said the way they do it and the arbitrary way doesn't make sense. and the cut cans across the board to nondefense spending like nih and air traffic control and all of that, that doesn't make sense. now all of the sudden within the republican caucus , the tea party wing has gotten them to reverse their position. now the cuts they said were reckless, no problem, we're going to make that happen, even though the congressional budget office has said that will hurt our economy. so on top of keeping this debt ceiling cloud over the economy, they're talking about these across-the-board meat ax cuts that will also hurt the economy, when we should be focused on jobs and economic growth .

>> congressman chris van hollen , good to have you with us tonight on "the ed show."

>> good to be with you. thank you.

>> there is a lot more coming up in the next half hour of "the ed show." stay with us. ted nugent goes off the deep end .

>> the barack obama gang attempting to reimplement the tyranny of king george .

>> we'll show you what he and his buddies will be up against.

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