Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced his running mate this morning: Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the chair of the U.S. House Budget Committee. The two men are launching a four-day bus tour today. I don’t know what surprises me more: Romney not choosing Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, or Ryan’s willingness to give up his committee chairmanship for a shot at the vice presidency.

Democratic House incumbents and challengers have already been running against the Ryan budget. Iowa’s representatives split on party lines when the House approved this plan in April 2011, and Representative Leonard Boswell was eager to draw this contrast between himself and IA-03 opponent Representative Tom Latham. Having Ryan on the Republican ticket ensures that tax and budget issues will be at the center of the presidential campaign discourse this fall. Ryan’s approach to solving the long-term deficit problem asks virtually nothing of wealthy people but would devastate Medicaid, not to mention the Medicare program for future retirees. After the jump I’ve posted excerpts from a new report on the Ryan plan’s impact on state budgets, along the Iowa Policy Project’s comment on how the Ryan budget would affect Iowa in particular.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread. I will update this post with Iowa reaction and more news and links after the jump. Representative Steve King was enthusiastic about the pick.

On August 8, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a detailed report about the Ryan budget by Michael Leachman, Richard Kogan, Vincent Palacios, and Kelsey Merrick. You can download the full document here (pdf). Excerpt from the summary:

The House-passed budget from Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is indicative of the sort of approach Congress likely would take if it rejects a balanced approach to deficit reduction that includes significant revenues:

*The Ryan budget would heavily shift costs to states by cutting Medicaid funding.  It would cut federal funding for the federal-state Medicaid program by 34 percent by 2022 (relative to what federal Medicaid funding for states would be under current law), and by steadily larger amounts in years after that.  These cuts would be in addition to reductions in federal Medicaid funding for states that would result from the Ryan budget’s call to repeal the health reform law.

* The Ryan budget would impose deep cuts in funding for a wide range of other state and local services, as well.  The Ryan budget also would cut non-defense “discretionary” (i.e. non-entitlement) funding by 22 percent in 2014 and later years, on top of the substantial cuts imposed by the BCA spending caps.  About one-third of this category of funding goes for grants to state and local governments to support services that states and localities provide, such as education, law enforcement, water treatment facilities, and disaster response.

If funding for these grants to state and local governments is cut by 22 percent, in line with the cut to overall non-defense discretionary funding, states and localities would lose nearly $28 billion in 2014 – on top of the cuts they will absorb as Congress shrinks funding for such grants, along with other discretionary programs, to comply with the BCA caps.  States and localities would lose $247 billion over the nine years from 2013 through 2021, in addition to the cuts they would absorb due to the BCA caps, as a result of the deep reductions the Ryan budget would make in funding for non-defense discretionary programs.  (These figures do not include additional cuts that the Ryan budget would make in highway, mass transit, and other transportation spending, as explained below.)

In theory, policymakers could spare state and local funding and take all of the required cuts from purely federal areas of non-defense discretionary spending; in reality, there is no chance that would occur, as it would entail extremely deep cuts in funding for veterans health care, biomedical research to find cures and better treatments for various diseases, protecting the borders, the FBI, the Social Security Administration, and the like.  Indeed, federal policymakers likely would cut state and local aid by more than 22 percent in order to protect funding for federal activities such as these.

*Cuts in funding for state and local governments under the Ryan plan would be much deeper than the automatic cuts (or “sequestration”) scheduled to begin in January. The BCA not only established caps that will require cuts in funding for defense and non-defense discretionary programs over the next nine years, but also established a mechanism that would require additional cuts – through a process called “sequestration” – in defense and non-defense discretionary funding (and cuts in some mandatory programs) if a “Supercommittee” did not recommend, and Congress and the President did not enact, a deficit reduction package that saved at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years.  Since such a package was not enacted, sequestration is scheduled to take effect automatically starting in January 2013.  But the cuts to non-defense discretionary funding under the Ryan budget would be three times deeper in 2014 than the cuts from sequestration.  In later years, the difference would be even larger.

*The Ryan budget cuts likely would bring funding for state and local services far below historical levels.  By 2021, the Ryan budget would reduce discretionary state and local grants to an estimated 0.6 percent of GDP, less than half the average of the last 35 years.

The Iowa Policy Project’s David Osterberg noted that “For Iowa, the projected loss is $237 million in 2014 alone and $2.1 billion from 2013 through 2021.”

Specifically, the Ryan budget proposal likely would reduce federal funding in these areas in Iowa:

• Education – Head Start, teacher quality programs, special education, and schools in high-poverty areas that likely would face deep cuts.

• Transportation – funding to build and repair roads, bridges, airports and public transportation systems.

• Public safety – funding for disaster assistance and grants programs that help local police departments hire, train and equip officers.

• Community development – funds that help improve water and sewer systems and revitalize deteriorating neighborhoods likely would face cuts.

• Housing – funding to provide rental assistance and heating and cooling assistance for low-income people, many of them elderly.

• Workforce – would have fewer resources for workforce training and placement services and child care assistance for low-income working parents.

• Health – funding to keep community health centers open, provide mental health and substance abuse services, and give nutrition support to low-income mothers and young children.

UPDATE: Niels Lesniewski of Roll Call Politics notes,

In picking a House Member as his running mate, Mitt Romney hopes to buck more than 80 years of history.

It has been that long since a Member was elected vice president directly from the House – and back then the Member in question was Speaker. In the decades since, only two have been nominated by major parties.

I recommend clicking through to read that whole piece.

Steve King commented via twitter, “Ryan for VP! Romney’s executive talent plus Ryan’s financial reform. Now give Mitt a mandate for balanced budget amendment to Constitution.”

Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post noted that Ryan voted for the August 2011 agreement on raising the debt ceiling. All five House representatives from Iowa voted against that deal, which called for automatic budget cuts (including to defense spending) beginning in 2013.

SECOND UPDATE: Interesting observation by West Wing Report: “Need to double check, but WWR is pretty sure this is the first time in modern history that no one on either ticket has military service.”

John Nichols thinks Ryan will be revealed as a hypocrite with increasing scrutiny of his deficit reduction plan.

I agree 100 percent with this part of Ezra Klein’s take on Romney’s choice.

Romney’s original intention was to make the 2012 election a referendum on President Obama’s management of the economy. Ryan makes it a choice between two competing plans for deficit reduction. This election increasingly resembles the Obama campaign’s strategy rather than the Romney campaign’s strategy.

Obama cannot afford to have the election be about whether Americans are better off than they were four years ago. He needs voters to see the election as a choice, not a referendum. The Obama campaign released this statement today:

CHICAGO – Obama for America Campaign Manager Jim Messina released the following statement in response to Mitt Romney picking Congressman Paul Ryan to be his presumptive nominee for vice president:

“In naming Congressman Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has chosen a leader of the House Republicans who shares his commitment to the flawed theory that new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors, will somehow deliver a stronger economy. The architect of the radical Republican House budget, Ryan, like Romney, proposed an additional $250,000 tax cut for millionaires, and deep cuts in education from Head Start to college aid. His plan also would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in health care costs to seniors. As a member of Congress, Ryan rubber-stamped the reckless Bush economic policies that exploded our deficit and crashed our economy. Now the Romney-Ryan ticket would take us back by repeating the same, catastrophic mistakes.”

Here is the transcript of Ryan’s speech to the crowd in Norfolk, Virginia today.

Governor Terry Branstad is going on Fox News today to praise Romney’s choice.

SUNDAY UPDATE: Ryan is going to visit the Iowa State Fair on Monday, August 13, and will speak at the Des Moines Register’s soapbox at 1:30 pm. Click here for the rest of the soapbox schedule.

LATER UPDATE: Ryan Lizza dug up Ryan’s high school yearbook and found his classmates voted him “biggest brown-noser.”

According to Politico Florida Republicans say that it’s “crucial to inoculate voters on Ryan’s ‘Roadmap,’ part of which would turn Medicare into a voucher-based system for future retirees.”

Romney advisers want to make sure the world knows they were against putting Ryan on the ticket.

Bob Schieffer asked softball questions with no follow-ups during a 60 Minutes segment with Romney and Ryan, the first joint interview for the GOP ticket.

Joe Strupp of Media Matters shares some Wisconsin journalists’ insights about Paul Ryan.

One issue most journalists raised was that Ryan left Wisconsin at a young age and climbed the political ladder in Washington. One local scribe compared him to Dick Cheney in that regard, stating both men rose to the top by focusing on D.C. connections and not in home state political circles.

“The way to understand him is he is Dick Cheney, he is a guy who went to Washington as soon as he could, rooted himself in the establishment, got himself elected as soon as he could and became a major player,” said John Nichols, an associate editor at the Capital Times in Madison. “He is Dick Cheney with very good hair.” […]

“There are people in his district shocked to find out he was a big player on budget stuff. He has been able to define his own story.He didn’t really spend any time in state politics and right out of college he went right into interning. While he is a Wisconsin congressman, he is not somebody who came up through the state ranks.”