Congressman David Cicilline is just as excited as his Republican colleagues about their passage of Chairman Paul Ryan’s GOP budget blueprint last week – but for very different reasons.

“It’s interesting,” Cicilline said Tuesday during a half-hour interview with WPRI.com in his Pawtucket district office. “During my campaign I was criticized for doing a ‘Scare the Seniors’ tour. This is exactly what I was talking about. This is real!”

Ryan’s sweeping 2012 tax-and-spending plan would sharply reduce the size of the federal government by cutting $6 trillion in spending over the next decade; ending traditional Medicare for Americans who are currently 55 and under; and turning Medicaid into block grants. It would not change Social Security.

The House of Representatives voted 235-193 along party lines Friday to pass Ryan’s budget, with the exception of four Republicans who voted with Democrats to reject it. Senate Democrats and President Obama have declared the budget dead on arrival.

“There are few issues where I think the differences between the parties are really stark, and now we have an example,” Cicilline said. “With the exception of four Republicans, every other Republican voted to end Medicare as we know it, the Medicare guarantee. Every single Democrat opposed it. That’s a big difference, and voters need to know that.”

The changes to Medicare are key to the critique of Ryan’s budget that Cicilline plans to offer at senior high-rises in Woonsocket, Warren, Pawtucket, North Providence and Central Falls during the two-week congressional recess. The freshman Democrat argued his message is not demagoguery but rather a fair comparison of the parties’ priorities.

But Cicilline also said Congress has “got to be serious about managing the deficit,” which he said has primarily been caused by “two wars and tax cuts for the richest Americans.” He again called for the Obama administration to speed up its timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

“We’re cutting the COPS program here while we’re training police officers in Afghanistan,” he said. “This is a moment when we have to make this country our priority.”

On Medicare, Cicilline acknowledged the program’s finances will be strained in the coming years by continued growth in medical inflation, and said he hoped new initiatives included in last year’s health reform law will help hold down costs.

Cicilline is one of just nine freshman Democrats – compared with 87 freshman Republicans – in the House this year, making him a junior member of a minority party in a majority-ruled chamber.

The congressman said being a backbencher limits what he can do, but he still thinks it’s important to mold his own legislation even if it stands little chance of passing. He is also focused on constituency services – his office has received roughly 9,000 pieces of correspondence since he took office in January.

Asked what has surprised him about Washington after four months on the job, Cicilline paused for a moment, then replied: “It’s a very, very partisan place – surprisingly partisan. … I think there are a lot of people who have a lot of scar tissue from these really, really tough fights, over the last few years in particular.”

Cicilline declined to discuss whether he may face a challenge getting re-elected next year, citing ethics rules that prevent members from talking party politics in their district offices.

This is the second of two articles from my interview with Congressman Cicilline.