Biden, Ryan to Play Fiscal-Cliff Roles - Wall Street Journal [dayinformations.blogspot.com]
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By GERALD F. SEIB
The two men taking the stage for the vice-presidential debate Thursday night are, like all vice presidents and vice-presidential wannabes, playing second fiddle.
But after the election, at least one, or perhaps both, will be central players in the biggest drama in the nation's capital: the looming fiscal cliff and the coming rethink of the government's budget and tax policies.
As a result, how Vice President Joe Biden and Republican Rep. Paul Ryan handle those issues in the debate and the campaign may, in some ways, be even more telling than the posturing of their bosses, President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney. The two men atop the ticket position themselves as the outsiders who scoff at the way the game is played in Washington. Their running mates, by contrast, are legitimate insiders and certain to be in the backrooms when dealing is done.
For his part, Mr. Biden wasn't groomed as a budget expert. His meatiest Senate experience came in foreign policy and legal issues.
As it happens, though, the last four years have been a crash course for him in the substance and the politics of budgets, debt ceilings and spending.
As vice president, Mr. Biden ran a committee of bipartisan, bicameral lawmakers who came up with a list of spending cuts the two parties actually could agree upon.
More crucially, he became the White House's main back-channel budget interlocutor with Republicans in Congress, particular Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. Mr. Biden knows lawmakers' language, knows how to separate bluster from underlying reality, and has the level of trust that conveys only to a longtime member of the congressional club.
If President Obama wins re-election, there will be nobody more important in the mad dash that lies just ahead, in which the White House and Congress have less than two months to try to cut a deal to prevent the potentially crippling automatic spending cuts, tax increases and collision with the legal debt ceiling that will kick in at the end of this year or early next year.
Mr. Biden's vice-presidential debate counterpart, Rep. Ryan, meanwhile, has indeed been groomed as a budget wonk. He has spent his career in Washington, and everything he has doneâ€"as a young aide at a think tank, as a legislative assistant and as a young congressman who rode a fast track to chairmanship of the House Budget Committeeâ€"has been the equivalent of a lifetime education in the contours and minefields of the mammoth federal budget.
At the tender age of 42, he now is his party's reigning intellectual leader in shaping the GOP's view of the proper size and shape of government.
His budget plan, offered when he became the Budget Committee chairman two years ago and honed further this year, is, in fact, the party's de facto fiscal blueprint. Others in the party have sound bites and impulses. Mr. Ryan has the plan and the numbers, and he knows the arguments for and against what he has proposed, cold.
This has been a bit awkward for Mr. Romney since Mr. Ryan was picked as his running mate, because the GOP nominee has tried to embrace the Ryan plan in generalâ€"pleasing conservatives who think it represents the genuine tough-minded approach the party needs to presentâ€"while sliding away from its tougher and more controversial particulars, including its embrace of Medicare spending cuts.
Still, if Mr. Romney wins, Mr. Ryan's expertise certainly will be put to use, and fast. Because he knows the budget and the congressional budget players so well, he seems destined to be a Romney administration's chief inside player in the fiscal dramas, just as Mr. Biden has been.
Even if Mr. Romney loses, Mr. Ryan is going to be a big player. Assuming he wins re-election in his Wisconsin district and Republicans hold control of the House, Mr. Ryan would remain chairman of the House Budget Committee.
More important, he will be seen, by virtue of his national exposure in the campaign, as a party spokesman on issues he knows best. Even in defeat, his role would be enhanced.
Which leads to a key question about the two vice-presidential candidates: Will their partisan roles in the campaign make it easier or harder for them to help the two parties find the common ground?
Both men are good at engaging the other side without alienating the other side; they are generally well-liked, which helps.
But they also haven't been successful at getting the big budget deal done.
Mr. Ryan refused to endorse the final product of the Simpson-Bowles bipartisan budget commission of which he was a part.
Mr. Biden's subsequent bipartisan congressional group fell short of going beyond spending cuts to strike a big budget deal.
The campaign pressure is on for these two, but it may be even higher after the election.
Write to Gerald F. Seib at
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