Mitt Romney defends the House Republican budget, saying it “does not balance the budget on the backs of the poor and the elderly.” Steve Benen objects, pointing out that more than 60 percent of the budget cuts come from the small fraction of federal spending targeted to the poor. But Romney is actually right about this: the Ryan budget does not balance the budget on the backs of the poor. That’s because it doesn’t balance the budget at all.
Or, at least, it doesn’t balance the budget until 2040, and this is assuming it can produce trillions upon trillions of dollars by eliminating unspecified tax deductions, and will reduce the non-entitlement portion of the federal budget to less than what Romney wants to spend on defense alone.
So possibly this is one of those carefully-crafted Romney statements designed to be technically correct but in a fashion his audience could not anticipate.
