Meanwhile, Wyden has also accumulated considerable seniority, despite his youthful demeanor (and a new baby at home). With the announced retirement of Democratic Senator of Montana Max Baucus, Wyden is set to replace him as chair of the powerful Senate Finance Committee in the next Congress (assuming that Democrats retain control of the Senate). Recently he spoke with The National Memo about the budget, tax reform, health care and other matters of concern to the Finance committee.

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On the IRS scandal:

Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to President Obama, addressed the IRS scandal, saying that the law is "irrelevant" though the actions of the IRS were "outrageous and inexcusable."

“I can’t speak to the law here. The law is irrelevant,” he said on ABC's This Week. “The activity was outrageous and inexcusable, and it was stopped and it needs to be fixed to ensure it never happens again.”

When pressed by host George Stephanopoulos, Pfeiffer explained: “What I mean is, whether it’s legal or illegal is not important to the fact that the conduct doesn’t matter. The Department of Justice has said that they’re looking into the legality of this. The president is not going to wait for that. We have to make sure it does not happen again, regardless of how that turns out.”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on the other hand, said that he cannot believe that the misconduct by IRS employees was so limited in scope. “I can’t believe that one agent sort of started this,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union. “It seems too widespread.”

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"Those of us who have had the briefings, seen the videos, know there was no protest involved," Ryan said. "To suggest afterwards that this was the result of a spontaneous protest, we now know is not the case. So the burden of proof here is on the administration's side. Why did they continue to push this kind of a story when they knew nearly immediately afterwards that that was not the case?"

Host Chris Wallace asked Ryan if he thinks the White House "purposely misled" the American people to help win the election. "I don't know the answer to that question," Ryan replied. "Rather make a conclusion before an investigation has been completed, we just need to investigate this for the sake of good government."

As The Huffington Post points out, this is a slightly different approach from the one Ryan has been taking:

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In a statement on Monday, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., cast doubt on Heritage's findings, saying: “The Congressional Budget Office has found that fixing our broken immigration system could help our economy grow. A proper accounting of immigration reform should take into account these dynamic effects.”

Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform released a statement on Monday also denouncing the findings (while maintaining its support for the think tank in general): "The Heritage Foundation is a treasured ally in the conservative movement and a pillar of the conservative policy community," said immigration policy aide Joshua Culling. "However, this study is every bit as flawed as its 2007 iteration."

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He continued that Mitt Romney in particular was one of those bad candidates. “Mitt Romney appeared like a kid who showed up for his science project and the teacher said, ‘Explain it,’ and Mitt couldn’t do it,” Sessions said. “His ‘dad,’ Paul Ryan, explained it to him, but Mitt didn’t get it. … That’s why we lost the last election.”

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So, in effect, Ryan has made himself .001 percent less awful than he was before.

In response to a question about gay rights, Ryan chalked his 1999 vote to ban gay adoption in the District of Columbia to a freshman foible during his first term in Congress:

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From the FBI's press release on the arrest:

According to the affidavit, from May 2012 through February 2013, Adam Paul Savader sent anonymous text messages using Google Voice numbers to 15 women stating that he had nude photographs of the women and threatening to distribute the nude photographs to the women’s friends and family members unless the women sent him more nude photographs of themselves. Savader sent some of the victims links to a photo-sharing website where nude pictures of the victims had been posted.

From the New York Daily News:

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In short, the original Reinhart-Rogoff paper had three significant problems, ranging from cherry-picking data, to dubious weighting schemes, to —most embarrassing of all — an Excel spreadsheet error that accidentally left out several crucial data points.

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So we’ve come to this point, as a nation,

Where a white man with money and station,

Is no longer a shoe-in,

So the Right Wing’s now stewin’:

“’Tis the End of Civilization!”

Bruce F. Cole

Kamuela, Hawaii

From Delaware hails our VP,

A fiscal cliff jumper is he.

He'll work on your pecs,

Offer old ladies sex,

Won't someone please put this guy on TV?

Josh Klemons

Madison, Wis.

Where’s Obama’s diversity minder–

His “qualified female” staff finder?

He’s named white guys galore,

To positions top-drawer,

Perhaps he should borrow Mitt’s binder.

Madeleine Begun Kane

Bayside, Queens

Did we have an assault weapons binge?

Just the thought should make all of us cringe.

Can we trust NRA,

To be honest when they,

Are the voice of a lunatic fringe?

Stephen Whitred

Barriere, B.C., Canada

In a tale of pro cycling woe,

Doping brought down a mighty hero.

But one detail I find,

Really frazzles my mind,

Who knew Oprah still had her own show?

Tom Foltz

Fort Wayne, Ind.

Although your new limerick contest is thrillin',

My brain appears not to be willin'

When every new verse

Than the last one is worse.

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"Our critics say we should abandon our pro-life beliefs. But that would only demoralize our voters," the Hill reports Ryan told the Susan B. Anthony List gala last night. "It’s an odd strategy, I think: the cynical ploy followed by the thumping defeat."

"Our task isn't to purge our ranks. It's to grow them," Ryan said at the event in Washington.

The congressman is known primarily as a budget wonk, but is well to the right of many Republicans on abortion, opposing it in all cases (including rape and incest) except for when the life of the mother is in danger.

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Obama didn’t talk about it when he first campaigned for the job -- if he had, he surely wouldn’t have won the Democratic nomination, and may not even have beaten John McCain, since not even Republican presidential candidates publicly campaign to weaken what their party calls “entitlements.” Everyone sensibly had assumed that no Democrat would want to weaken or reduce the crowning achievements of Democratic Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, not to mention of the Democratic Party itself. But immediately after getting elected, Barack Obama admitted he wanted to do just that.

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As travel arrangements were set,

Rafalca had reason to fret,

When Romney explained,

To get to the Games,

She'd be strapped to the roof of the jet!

Pete DeVriese

Oakland, Calif.

The Romney's were off with a start.

Regrettably, Seamus had farts.

So into the crate,

If he makes it that's great.

If not, Mitt will sell off the parts.

Michael Peterson

Willowbrook, Ill.

Mitt’s not vulgar, profane or salacious.

He would never offend! Good gracious!

But in unctuous perfection,

He seeks his election,

In a manner sublimely mendacious.

Quentin Sullivan

Haverhill, Mass.

Paul Ryan is sure that it's true.

All abortions are wicked to do.

Not for rape, or incest,

Even death - Paul knows best.

For a zygote's worth much more than you.

Paul Bamborough

Norway

RNC speakers begin to assemble,

And their rhetoric starts to dissemble.

From Rubio to Ryan.

There'll be no shortage of lyin'.

Causing fact-checkers all over to tremble.

Jim Brown

Scarsdale, N.Y.

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How did we get into this situation?

The trail leads through federal-state interactions, like so much of American history. States were largely independent of the federal government until the 1960s. The federal government began at that time to provide resources for states to expand their activities in healthcare and then other activities as well. These grants have risen from well under $1 billion a year to around $500 billion in recent years. States rely on these funds to give grants to cities and for helping with many other expenses.

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However, all of that doesn’t mean the proposal Ryan spearheaded is unimportant, nor does it mean that there are no worthwhile analyses to explain that significance. On the contrary, the proposal is quite important because it endorses an economic war waged by the upper class against everyone else. Two simple studies make this war painfully obvious.

To properly contextualize those studies, first keep in mind three facts: 1) According to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, “The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year” and control 40 percent of the nation’s total wealth, 2) the bottom 80 percent of Americans own just 7 percent of the nation’s wealth, and 3) Stiglitz notes that “while the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall.”

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The Republican measure is advancing to the finish line in the House as the Senate starts a lengthy slog toward passage of a rival budget measure. It takes a sharply different view, restoring automatic cuts to agency budgets and increasing taxes by $1 trillion over the coming decade.

The dueling budget plans are anchored on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum in Washington, appealing to core partisans in the warring parties gridlocked over persistent budget deficits. President Barack Obama is exploring the chances of forging a middle path that blends new taxes and modest curbs to government benefits programs.

The sharp contrast over the 2014 budget and beyond came as the House is positioned to clear unfinished budget business — a sweeping, government-wide funding bill to keep Cabinet agencies running through the 2013 budget year, which ends Sept. 30.

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In a statement from NETWORK, the Sister Simone Campbell-led social justice organization denounced Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) budget as creating "untenable situations for those struggling to survive" through cuts to Medicaid and the social safety net.

In a multi-state, grassroots effort against austerity cuts, a coalition of faith leaders have organized events around the country on Wednesday, including delivering loaves and fishes to members of the House of Representatives (a reference the Biblical story of having enough during a time of scarcity).

They've also released an animated message about "finding the political courage to pass a moral budget."

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Our Nation so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrious population should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied working men and women a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. A self-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling workers' wages or stretching workers' hours.

Enlightened business is learning that competition ought not to cause bad social consequences which inevitably react upon the profits of business itself. All but the hopelessly reactionary will agree that to conserve our primary resources of man power, government must have some control over maximum hours, minimum wages, the evil of child labor and the exploitation of unorganized labor. –FDR, May 1937

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"We ought to get rid of certain federal departments and agencies, stopping only to shift the role of governing back to the states, where it belongs," Broun writes. "The Departments of Education and Energy, for example, are two bloated bureaucracies that we don’t need; their core functions would be absorbed by the states through block grants, saving taxpayers at least $500 billion over the next decade."

From the Op-Ed:

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The first point to consider is that in reality, Obama and his fellow Democrats would only be persuaded to sign off on changes to Social Security as a part of a grand bargain, in which the Republicans gave up something major in return, like significant additional tax revenues. While suggestions by House leadership this weekend that the party would never accept additional revenue under any circumstances is just posturing, in my view, it's obviously still something conservatives have little reflexive enthusiasm for, having just swallowed them in January.

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