Deficit

At a townhall-style event in Iowa, Paul Ryan was asked to provide more specifics about the Romney-Ryan economic plan, and he proceeded to talk about Romney's 5-point plan for about eight minutes. Buzzfeed posts the video: 

It’s a couple days old, but nevertheless worth watching: Here’s the clip of President Obama’s interview with David Letterman (which Steve Hayes discusses in greater detail here), during which Obama shows that he apparently has no idea how big our national debt is — apparently even to the nearest trillion (see around the 2:00 mark):

On Monday, the Romney campaign trumpeted a plan to change the campaign's direction and "reinforce more specifics" on policy. THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained a copy of a memo from GOP political veteran David Smick, addressed to the Romney campaign, with advice on how to "revamp" the television ad strategy. Read the memo below:

In his speech Wednesday night, Bill Clinton said, "President Obama started with a much weaker economy than I did. No president—not me or any of my predecessors—could have repaired all the damage in just four years."

Always looking "forward," President Obama has asked Bill Clinton—who was elected to the presidency 20 years ago—to speak tonight and suggest to the American people (whether explicitly or implicitly) that this is really a choice between Clinton and George W. Bush, rather than between Obama and Mitt Romney. If you're Obama, this beats running on your record.

Regardless of one's precise political peccadilloes, most of us agree this is one of the most important elections of our lifetime. However, one gets the feeling the Romney campaign, and even the RNC, either aren't aware of the stakes or, perhaps, just not sure of the best way to convey those stakes to the electorate. But there's a simple way to make sure the upcoming Republican convention in Tampa acts as a constant reminder of the stakes.

In an interview on March 22, two weeks before Mitt Romney would win the Wisconsin primary and effectively end the race for the Republican nomination, Milwaukee talk radio host Charlie Sykes asked about his embrace of Paul Ryan’s budget.

In a recent campaign television ad, President Barack Obama states, "I believe the only way to create an economy built to last is to strengthen the middle class. Asking the wealthy to pay a little more so we can pay down our debt in a balanced way." The last part--committing to pay down the national debt--is a promise Obama's reiterated throughout his presidency and campaign. 

Senator Mike Lee criticized President Obama's and the Democrats' plan to raise taxes, saying that "their proposal would leave 94% of this year's deficit intact, which makes it an inherently unserious proposal insofar as it relates to deficit reduction."

The House Financial Committee just concluded grilling banker Jamie Dimon on risky financial bets his firm, JPMorgan Chase, made that resulted in losses of at least $2 billion last month. Today’s hearing follows up on last week’s Senate Banking Committee grilling of Dimon on the same bad bets.

The eurozone might be cracking up, but as far as debt goes, America appears to be in worse shape than the entire eurozone in the long run. According to a new chart set to be released later today by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee, America is on track "to add three times more debt than [the] eurozone over [the next] 5 years."

New Jersey Republican governor Chris Christie blasted President Obama in a speech earlier today at a conservative conference in Chicago