NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Sunday conceded “Paul Ryan has shown considerable guts” with his Medicare plan, but she declared liberal Democratic Congressman Chris Van Hollen is “correct that nobody on the Republican side is showing any courage on the tax front. And unless taxes are part of the mix,” NBC’s chief foreign correspondent insisted in repeating the standard media refrain, “every grown-up knows” a deficit solution cannot be achieved.
The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson soon picked up the liberal agenda, regretting “Republicans will not talk about tax increases” while Democrats, supposedly, “talk about a lot of budget cuts.”
Mitchell’s “courage” terminology matched that employed by Chrystia Freeland, global editor-at-large for Thomson-Reuters, who three weeks ago, on ABC’s This Week, contended a deficit-reduction agreement must include “raising taxes,” but “that's the thing that I think no one has the courage to talk about.”
From the roundtable on the Sunday, May 22 Meet the Press:
ANDREA MITCHELL: ...What you're [David Gregory] saying and what Mike Murphy is saying is that people want leadership, people want someone to show some guts here. Paul Ryan has shown considerable guts, but you're [Democratic Congressman Chris Van Hollen] correct that nobody on the Republican side is showing any courage on the tax front. And unless taxes are part of the mix, every grown-up knows it can't reach a solution.
ANDREW SORKIN, NEW YORK TIMES: But Ryan opened the window today to actually come to the middle. He wants another proposal. He wants a proposal from the Democrats, and I think if they can actually -- I think there is an opportunity to get there. So, I think you give Ryan credit for at least bringing something to the table and then when do the Democrats come --
EUGENE ROBINSON, WASHINGTON POST: Let me point out two things. Number one, Republicans will not talk about tax increases. Democrats talk about a lot of budget cuts. The question for Democrats is how deeply do you cut the budget. So, the second thing is, on Medicare, people don't want it to be a voucher program. They don't want the kind of change Paul Ryan wants. So, you can call that leadership, but if nobody wants to follow, it's not leadership. It’s not what people want.
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