Thursday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” former House Speaker Paul Ryan said “our politics are just fundamentally unserious right now.”
Co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin said, “You have been on this debt issue that we have in this country since I’ve known you.”
He asked, “Are you surprised, at least as I am, that this hasn’t become a bigger issue?”
Ryan said, “I am surprised. What is frustrating is the Overton window in our politics is open for all these crazy ideas but closed for things like debt reduction. So our politics are just fundamentally unserious right now, and they used to be better, frankly. When I was budget chair — in the early 2000s, in the ’10s — I passed four budgets that paid off the debt, that balanced the budget, that reformed Medicare and Medicaid, and all of these things. And no one lost their seats over those votes.”
He added, “Out of Congress, we passed out of the House these budgets that did this. And today, you can’t get that done.”
Co-host Becky Quick asked, “What changed? What happened?”
Ryan said, “Our politics changed. We became populist, both parties are populist parties. Grievance politics, I would argue, is mostly what is being pushed. But we became populist parties with populist beliefs. Things like debt reduction and entitlement reform are unpopular. Therefore, we don’t have anything close to the politics we need to get this stuff done.”
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