Ryan draws national attention at town halls

GREENFIELD, Wis. — At the last of four events on Rep. Paul Ryan's "listening tour" of his district Thursday, he called on a man in the front row of a high school auditorium, then instantly recognized him.

var data = blocks.columnist;if (data != undefined){document.getElementById('columnistmug').innerHTML=data;} By Darren Hauck, for USA TODAY

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan speaks at Franklin High School, as he tours throughout his district over the Easter recess, sometimes making five stops in a day.

By Darren Hauck, for USA TODAY

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan speaks at Franklin High School, as he tours throughout his district over the Easter recess, sometimes making five stops in a day.

"You changed clothes!" Ryan told Steve Jozefczyk. The 54-year old salesman from Franklin, Wis., had asked Ryan several critical questions from the front row of an event six hours earlier in Waterford, when he wore a shirt and tie. In Greenfield, it was a black "Faux News" parody T-shirt.

Jozefczyk admitted trying to trick Ryan into calling on him again. But Ryan listened anyway. "You have to look at the revenue side and the expense side. And you're afraid to touch revenues," he told the House Budget Committee chairman.

It's a common question, and Ryan has a common response: "Broaden the base," he says. By eliminating tax deductions and shelters for top-earners, "you can shrink or flatten the tax rates for everybody."

With Congress wrapping up a two-week Easter break, lawmakers across the country have been back home meeting with constituents.

The budget — and especially Medicare — is the hot topic everywhere, nowhere more so than in Ryan's southern Wisconsin district. Ryan is the architect of a GOP budget plan that would fundamentally remake the health care program for seniors.

In the district that has elected the 41-year-old congressman seven times, constituents — especially older ones — were largely supportive. The first comment at the first of four stops Thursday — a mostly friendly room in the basement of Waterford Village Hall — came from Ken Thiede, 68-year-old retiree from Rochester, Wis.

"Your opponents are using Scare-Care," Thiede said. "I give you an 'A' for cojones."

Ryan demurred at the word, but the audience laughed. "It's a German term," Thiede said.

Pointed questions

Some of the most pointed questions were along the lines of those posed by Amy Kinosian, a 58-year-old fifth-grade teacher from Eagle, Wis.

"Did you vote for both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Did you vote for any offsetting budget cuts?" she asked. "You voted for Medicare Part D— again with no funding."

Ryan said he did vote for the wars and for Medicare Part D — the prescription drug program passed by a Republican congress in 2003. In fact, he said, it should be a model for what he wants to do to Medicare as a whole.

With Part D, Medicare subsidizes a number of competing prescription drug plans, which older Americans can choose from. The Congressional Budget Office has said the cost of that plan is 41% lower than expected.

Extending that competition to all of Medicare will bring down health care costs, he said — especially if health insurance companies can sell plans across state lines like other types of insurers. "You can't watch TV for an hour without having a gecko lizard thingy trying to sell you car insurance," he says in an oft-repeated laugh line.

Beginning in 2022, Ryan's plan would ask new retirees to select a health insurance plan from among a list approved by the government, which would provide a subsidy to the provider. But guaranteed benefits would be eliminated.

At each stop, Ryan asks for a show of hands from those 55 and older. (At least four-fifths were.) They wouldn't be affected, he said.

"But what about mine!" heckled a prematurely balding young man in the back of the room in Greenfield, Wis. He declined to give his name.

Democrats have seized on moments like these as evidence that there's a backlash developing against Ryan's budget. After Ryan was booed at an earlier town hall, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi issued a statement: "Chairman Ryan, the people, including your constituents, are talking. Are you listening?"

Ryan said he is. And while he couldn't identify any input that would cause him to rethink his plan, he said, "I never look at these budgets as a fait accompli." The budget resolution hasn't gotten to the Senate, and many of the details would get worked out in follow-up bills.

The crowds are reminiscent of the congressional town hall meetings in the summer of 2009, as Democrats defended the health insurance law known as the Affordable Care Act. "The size is as high, and the passion is as high," Ryan told USA TODAY.

Ryan had 19 public events scheduled for Congress's Easter break — many in capacity-filled rooms throughout his district. They started last week in libraries and senior centers, but by Thursday several had to be moved into high school gymnasiums to accommodate larger crowds. In Waterford, dozens who arrived 20 minutes early were turned away. In Oak Creek, 30 people stood in the lobby after a 220-seat courtroom filled up. At the last stop, none of the 800 seats in a high school auditorium were left empty.

"Gosh, Waterford, we're lucky if we can get 12 people here for town hall meetings," he told a room of 250 people. So many television stations and networks wanted him to wear wireless microphones that "I look like Batman wearing this," Ryan joked.

Even critics more playful

Ryan asked crowds to show the national media covering the events that Wisconsinites can discuss issues civilly — and they mostly complied. He even had to admit some of the questions were softballs. In Franklin, a man asked how the GOP budget compared to the budget passed last year when Pelosi, D-Calif., was speaker.

"They didn't have a budget last year," Ryan said. "But I take it that was a set-up question."

Even some of his critics were more playful than critical of him. Kinosian, the fifth-grade teacher, said she supports an alternate budget proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which she said is "just as gutsy" as the Ryan plan.

"Obviously, they're not as boyishly handsome as you are," she said.

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Obama Draws Contrasts With Republican Budget Plan

April 15: President Barack Obama returns to the White House in Washington after a trip to Chicago. (AP)

WASHINGTON –  Launching a week devoted to selling his deficit-reduction plan, President Obama on Saturday drew sharp contrasts with a Republican budget that he says offers a vision that "is wrong for America."

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama charged Republicans with seeking to dismantle venerable safety net programs and choosing tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of students paying for college or older adults on Medicare, the federal health care program.

"To restore fiscal responsibility, we all need to share in the sacrifice - but we don't have to sacrifice the America we believe in," Obama said.

The criticism echoed his speech Wednesday in which he unveiled a $4 trillion deficit-reduction plan over 12 years, a goal he says he can achieve with a blend of spending cuts, changes in major government health care programs and tax increases.

Obama's message represents his clearest attempt to place ideological distance with Republicans after months spent negotiating a compromise six-month spending bill that trimmed more than $38 billion from the government. Obama signed that legislation Friday.

Obama plans to continue his plan's pitch throughout the week, holding town halls in Northern Virginia Tuesday and in Palo Alto, California, and Reno, Nevada, later in the week during a Western tour that includes at least two Democratic Party fundraisers.

While trying to cast the debate in his own terms, the president's attention to fiscal discipline signals a watershed in national politics. After two years devoted to priming an anemic economy with new spending and passing an overhaul of health care, Congress and the White House are beginning a debate about how to tame long-term deficits and a crushing debt of more than $14 trillion.

In the Republicans' weekly address, Sen. Tom Coburn called that turning point "a monumental shift for Washington."

Still, Obama predicted in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday that fundamental questions about how to change giant benefit programs like Medicare or how to change the tax system might have to wait until after the 2012 presidential elections.

He conceded, however, that he would have to offer spending cuts to win votes in the Republican-controlled House for an increase in the debt limit. The debt will hit its ceiling of $14.3 trillion by mid-May, and administration officials say the cap must be raised by no later than early July.

And while Obama, in the interview, predicted a "smart compromise," his address Saturday left little room for common ground with the House Republican budget. That plan, approved by the House Friday, would reduce deficits by $4 trillion over the next 10 years. It would extend Bush-era tax cuts at all income levels, repeal Obama's health care law and overhaul of Medicare by providing future retirees a voucher-style federal payment to purchase coverage from private plans.

"It's a vision that says that in order to reduce the deficit, we have to end Medicare as we know it and make cuts to Medicaid that would leave millions of seniors, poor children and Americans with disabilities without the care they need," Obama said.

Obama has adopted a sharper, partisan tone since announced his re-election bid more than a week ago.

Coburn said Obama's sharp critique of the House Republican budget amounted to "campaign-style political attacks."

"Instead of describing the threat and bringing both sides together, the president attacked those who have a different vision of the government," he said.

Coburn is one of a bipartisan group of six senators working to find a compromise on long-term deficit reduction. The group has not tipped its hand as its members continue to seek common ground. They have not set a timeline for achieving a compromise.

Coburn, however, praised the House Republican Medicare proposal, suggesting that the so-called Gang of Six may still have a long way to go before reaching a compromise.

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Retired Justice O'Connor Draws Criticism Over Political, Judicial Activities

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Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor speaks at the Women's Conference Oct. 26, 2010, in Long Beach, Calif.

WASHINGTON -- Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor continues to hear cases in U.S. appeals courts, while also playing a role in public policy issues. Her critics say she should do one or the other, but not both. 

O'Connor, 81, was forced to apologize for 50,000 recorded telephone calls made to Nevada voters in which she supported a ballot measure to change the way state judges are selected. O'Connor said she did not authorize the calls featuring her recorded voice, much less their post-midnight delivery. But she also defended her involvement in the campaign that included her appearance in a television commercial. 

In September, federal judges in Iowa stayed away from a conference on judicial elections at which O'Connor spoke in the midst of another campaign over ballot issues. The judges had received an informal opinion that their presence would violate the judiciary's ethics code. 

Most recently, O'Connor hosted an after-hours reception at the court that was billed as a celebration of Bristol Bay in Alaska. But the featured speakers, other than O'Connor, were opponents of a proposed Alaskan copper and gold mine. They were in Washington to lobby lawmakers and regulators against the proposed Pebble Mine. 

Arthur Hellman, an ethics expert at the University of Pittsburgh law school, said O'Connor should consider stopping her participation in court cases if she "wants to engage in this level of political or politically related activity." 

Partisan-tinged questioning of conduct by high court justices has grown. 

Liberal interest groups have faulted Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas for speaking at a private dinner hosted by Charles Koch, one of two energy-company-owning brothers who, liberal groups say, have too much sway on policymakers. 

Some liberals have called on Thomas to sit out the expected high court fight over the health care law because of his wife's public criticism of the law. Some conservatives say Justice Elena Kagan should not take part in the health care case because of her work in the Obama administration before joining the court. 

O'Connor has traveled the country since her retirement in 2006 to criticize costly election campaigns for state judges, promote enhanced civics education for schoolchildren and advocate for Alzheimer's research. Her husband, John, died in 2009 of complications from Alzheimer's disease. 

Her primary focus has been on judicial independence, which she believes is harmed by electing judges. 

At the same time, she has heard cases on appeal since her retirement. It is not uncommon for retired justices to sit with federal appeals courts from time to time. Justice David Souter, who left the court in 2009, has heard cases with the Boston-based court. 

Through the end of March, O'Connor had written two appellate decisions and joined the majority in a half-dozen others this year. None of the cases involved judicial elections or the fate of the Alaska bay. 

The continuing judicial work allows O'Connor, who earns $213,900, to receive salary increases that are tied to inflation. Judges who stop hearing cases receive a pension equal to their final annual salary as a full-time judge, but are excluded from subsequent cost-of-living increases. 

Last week, O'Connor was the host of a Supreme Court reception "to celebrate the economic, cultural and ecological values of Alaska's Bristol Bay Watershed." 

Opponents of the proposed huge mine near the bay fear it will devastate the world's largest wild sockeye salmon fishery. The Environmental Protection Agency recently said it would study potential effects from the mine. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson attended and briefly spoke at the reception. 

O'Connor declined to answer questions for this story. But the head of the Wild Salmon Center, lead sponsor of the event, said O'Connor's participation came about because of their friendship and her love of fly fishing. 

Guido Rahr, the center's president, said his group hasn't taken a position on the mine and that the speakers were careful to "make sure we were respecting the location" of the reception at the court. 

Rahr said participants mainly "ate yummy salmon treats" and looked at National Geographic photos of the bay. 

But one speaker was a former Alaska state Senate president, Rick Halford, who told reporters the next day that the proposal was a "very, very dangerous kind of mine." 

Supporters of the project made their own visit to Washington a couple of weeks earlier. They were not received at the high court. 

Hellman, the Pittsburgh ethics expert, said he finds the court reception particularly troubling because "we're talking about political activity. It's a lobbying effort and she is lending her considerable prestige to that effort." 

Another ethics professor, Stephen Gillers of New York University, said that if the speeches were not about advocacy, then the event itself probably does not pose an ethical problem for O'Connor. On the other hand, Gillers said it is possible O'Connor would have to step aside from any appellate case involving the groups that sponsored the reception. 

The court hosts 50 to 60 after-hours events a year, many related to the court. Guidelines for use of the building forbid partisan political activity and fundraising, and require a justice to sponsor an event. A cash bar and dancing are not permitted. 

Supreme Court justices are not covered by the ethics rules that apply to all federal judges. Still, justices generally adhere to those rules, Hellman said. 

O'Connor's involvement in last year's ballot issues in Iowa and Nevada also drew a rare rebuke from another federal judge. 

Senior Judge Laurence Silberman of the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., said "the issue of whether state court judges should be chosen or ratified by election or solely by appointment is a political issue on which serving federal judges should not publicly advocate, one way or the other." 

Silberman said that unlike the criticism of Scalia and Thomas, which he termed phony issues, O'Connor's advocacy "is a real ethical issue." 

O'Connor took part in a conference in Des Moines, Iowa, in September on the topic of judicial elections. That appearance came during a contentious campaign about whether voters should retain three Iowa Supreme Court justices who were part of a unanimous court ruling in favor of gay marriage. 

Federal judges in Iowa had been invited to attend by the Iowa State Bar Association, according to Chief Judge Robert Pratt of the Southern District of Iowa 

But Pratt wondered whether their attendance would be improper. 

Lacking the time for a formal opinion from the judiciary's ethics committee, the judge took advantage of a less formal process and called an ethics committee member for his views. 

Pratt said the committee member, U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf, informally advised the judges to stay away. 

They did, but O'Connor attended and said voters shouldn't punish judges when they disagree with their decisions. In the end, the three justices were ousted.

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