Paul Ryan to Obama: You're Distorting My Plan

Republicans met with President Obama today to talk about the debt, resulting in what the Los Angeles Times describes as a "pointed exchange" between Paul Ryan and Obama. Ryan accused the president and Democrats of distorting his proposal to overhaul Medicare. "It's been misdescribed by the president and many others," he said afterward. "So we simply described to him what it is we’ve been proposing so that he hears from us how our proposal works."

Other accounts had Ryan criticizing the president for a lack of leadership on the issue. But "that's not exactly what I said," Ryan added. "I said we've got to take on this debt and if we demagogue each other at the leadership level, then we're never going to take on our debt." The White House called the meeting productive even though it yielded no tangible progress on a deal, notes AP. And Obama seemed intent on continuing his attacks on Ryan's plan: "He doesn't believe that we need to end Medicare as we know it," said spokesman Jay Carney. The developments came a day after House Republicans rejected the idea of raising the debt limit. (More Paul Ryan stories.)