And the battle is joined. In his first press conference responding to the White House’s budget, Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, said that the president’s deficit commission “gave people like me hope,” which had been dashed. Jeff Sessions, Ryan’s Republican counterpart in the Senate minority, pointed to the words of the commission co-chairman Erskine Bowles, who said it goes “nowhere near” fixing long-term fiscal challenges.
“I guess he had to know his words would have specific meaning today,” said Sessions. “Chairman Ryan has proposed solutions, and what does he get? He gets attacked!”
