The current employer of the new chief of staff for Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), is praising the giant spending increasing, debt lifting budget and debt ceiling deal that President Barack Obama, outgoing House Speaker John Boehner, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell negotiated behind closed doors.
BPC president Jason Grumet and senior vice president G. William Hoagland said in a joint statement on Tuesday:
The president and the bipartisan Congressional leadership are to be congratulated for their tentative agreement on the federal budget. The Bipartisan Policy Center has long argued against any action that would jeopardize the full faith and credit of the federal government’s borrowing authority. This agreement maintains that authority without question. BPC has long supported changes to the earlier Budget Control Act of 2011 that set unachievable spending caps on both domestic and defense spending. This agreement necessarily adjusts the caps while not adding to the federal deficit and ensures that no threat of a government shutdown will be visited this December. BPC worked tirelessly with advocates, experts and policymakers over the last year to find consensus on changes to the Social Security Disability Insurance program. We are pleased that many of the reforms embodied in the agreement today reflect our recommendations.
The statement goes on to detail more ways in which the BPC worked on the budget and debt ceiling deal. The statement also attacked “regular order” in Congress—something House Speakership candidate Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) wants to restore, while Ryan hasn’t laid out how he would do such a thing—and praised “bipartisanship.”
The statement from Grumet and Hoagland continues:
Our Disability Insurance Working Group supported provisions to reinstate demonstration authority for Social Security to test innovative ways to improve the program, specifically including a pilot to replace the so-called ‘cash cliff’ with a gradual benefit offset in order to encourage beneficiaries to work to the extent of their ability. We also recommended provisions to allow beneficiaries to report earnings electronically, use cap adjustments to fully fund continuing disability reviews to ensure that those who remain on the program continue to be eligible, expand cooperative disability investigation units nationwide to fight fraud, and reallocate dedicated tax revenue between the Social Security trust funds to ensure that benefits will continue to be paid as scheduled. It is unfortunate that ‘regular order’ in the politically charged environment of today has become dictated by the threats of defaults, discretionary sequesters, and government shutdowns. Nonetheless, the agreement reached today avoids all three of these potential disasters and allows government to continue to function as it should. Challenges remain, but today is a good day for bipartisanship.
The new aide Ryan has hired as his chief of staff in preparation for becoming Speaker, David Hoppe, is a senior adviser to the BPC.
“David Hoppe is a senior advisor to the Bipartisan Policy Center,” the BPC’s website reads, before detailing his history of work for establishment Republicans on Capitol Hill and as a lobbyist.
Ryan has distanced himself from the process of the deal—though he hasn’t weighed in on whether he will vote for it based on the substance of the deal.
Ryan said on Tuesday, according to Politico, that the “process stinks” when it comes to how this deal was structured.
“This is not the way to do the people’s business,” Ryan said. “And under new management we are not going to do the people’s business this way. We are up against a deadline – that’s unfortunate. But going forward we can’t do the people’s business. As a conference we should’ve been meeting months ago to discuss these things to have a unified strategy going forward.”
Ryan’s office has also gone out of its way to distance itself from the negotiations.
“He’s not been involved,” Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck told Breitbart News on Monday when asked if he supported the then-still-forthcoming deal.
It’s unclear at this time, however, whether Ryan will actually vote for the final deal.
Hoppe hasn’t returned a request for comment from Breitbart News on whether he stands with Ryan or with the BPC. He also hasn’t answered whether he helped others at the BPC negotiate this deal, or if it was just done by his colleagues there.
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