Romney sticks to own plan for budget

Associated Press

HIGH POINT, N.C.

Cheered by the biggest crowds of his campaign, Republican Mitt Romney declared Sunday that 42-year-old running mate Paul Ryan is ready to be president, but said his own budget plan, not the more detailed proposals of his partner, will be the basis of his White House bid.

“I have my budget plan,” he said. “And that’s the budget plan we’re going to run on.”

Earlier, Romney walked a careful line as he campaigned with Ryan by his side in North Carolina, singling out his running mate’s work “to make sure we can save Medicare.” But the presidential candidate never said whether he embraced Ryan’s austere plan himself, and he addressed the matter more directly in a “60 Minutes” interview, with Ryan still with him, that aired Sunday on CBS.

Democrats weren’t about to let them off that hook.

President Barack Obama, attending campaign fundraisers Sunday in Chicago, tagged Ryan as the “ideological leader” of the Republican Party.

“He is a decent man, he is a family man, he is an articulate spokesman for Gov. Romney’s vision but it is a vision that I fundamentally disagree with,” Obama said in his first public comments about Ryan’s selection.

Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod and other aides spent Sunday trying to brand Ryan’s budget “the Ryan-Romney plan.”

During the Republican primary, Romney had called Ryan’s budget a “bold and exciting effort” that was “very much needed.”

Ryan proposed to reshape the long-standing entitlement by setting up a voucherlike system to let future retirees shop for private health coverage or choose the traditional program.

Romney and Ryan, in their first joint television interview Sunday, were clearly mindful that some of Ryan’s proposals don’t sit well with key constituencies, among them seniors in critical states such as Florida and Ohio.