Paul Ryan, deficit hawk or dove?

Jan 7th 2011, 23:06 by G.I. | WASHINGTON, DC

[Greg Ip] FOR politicians, power is usually its own reward. But doing the right thing sometimes comes at the expense of power, which means they need other incentives, too. This seems to be the thinking behind the “FI$CY“, awarded to policymakers who lead “on confronting our fiscal challenges.”

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the Comeback America Initiative and the Concord Coalition handed out the awards Wednesday night. Two of the three recipients make sense: Mitch Daniels, Indiana’s Republican governor, has balanced his state’s budget with tough but judicious spending cuts and tax increases. Kent Conrad, the long-serving Democratic chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, was a driving force behind what eventually became the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission.

The third choice, Paul Ryan, is more of a puzzle.

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