Paul Davis Ryan (born January 29, 1970) is the U.S. Representative for Wisconsin's 1st congressional district, serving since 1999, and the Republican Party nominee for Vice-President in the 2012 election. Ryan is often cited for his views on economic policy and especially his proposed changes to Medicare. Having been considered a possible vice presidential running mate for the 2012 presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, the Romney campaign confirmed on August 10, 2012 that Ryan had been selected.
Born and raised in Janesville, Wisconsin, Ryan earned a B.A. degree in economics and political science from Miami University in Ohio. In the mid to late 1990s, he worked as an aide to United States Senator Bob Kasten, as legislative director for Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, and as a speechwriter for former U.S. Representative and 1996 Republican vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp of New York. In 1998, Ryan won election to the United States House of Representatives, succeeding the two-term incumbent, fellow Republican Mark Neumann. He is now in his seventh term.
Ryan currently chairs the House Budget Committee, where he has played a prominent role in drafting and promoting the Republican Party's long-term budget proposals. As an alternative to the 2012 budget proposal of President Barack Obama, Ryan introduced a plan, The Path to Prosperity in April 2011 which included controversial changes to Medicare. He then helped introduce The Path to Prosperity: A Blueprint for American Renewal in March 2012, in response to Obama's 2013 budget. Ryan is one of the three co-founders of the Young Guns Program, an electoral recruitment and campaign effort by House Republicans.
Ryan was born and raised in the Wisconsin town of Janesville, the youngest child of Elizabeth A. "Betty" (née Hutter) and Paul Murray Ryan, a lawyer. He is of Irish and German ancestry, and is a fifth-generation Wisconsin native. Growing up, he and his family often went on hiking and skiing trips in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. As a boy, Ryan attended Camp Manito-wish YMCA, a wilderness canoe-tripping camp located in Boulder Junction, Wisconsin. Ryan was 16 years old when he found his father in bed, dead from a heart attack at age 55. Ryan's grandfather and great-grandfather had also died from heart attacks, at ages 57 and 59 respectively.
Graduating from Joseph A. Craig High School in Janesville in 1988, Ryan was voted prom king and "Biggest Brown-Noser" by his fellow classmates. He went on to attend Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, returning to Camp Manito-wish YMCA, to work as a staff member and counselor during his college summer vacations. During his junior year at Miami University, Ryan worked as an intern opening mail for the foreign affairs advisor assigned to Senator Bob Kasten of Wisconsin.Ryan graduated from Miami University with a BA in economics and political science in 1992. He also studied at the Washington Semester program at American University and was a member of the Delta Tau Delta social fraternity. Following his studies, Ryan briefly returned to Wisconsin and worked as a marketing consultant for an earth-moving company run by his relatives.
Early political career
Concerned that her son "was destined to become a ski bum", Betty Ryan reportedly nudged him to accept a congressional position as a staff economist attached to Kasten's office. In his early years working on Capitol Hill in D.C., Ryan supplemented his income by working as a waiter and fitness trainer and at other various side jobs.
After Kasten was defeated by Democrat Russ Feingold in 1992, Ryan became a speechwriter and a volunteer economic analyst with Empower America, an advocacy group formed by Jack Kemp, former education secretary Bill Bennett, the late diplomat Jeane Kirkpatrick, and former Representative Vin Weber of Minnesota. Empower America and Citizens for a Sound Economy merged in 2004 and the resulting organization was named FreedomWorks.
Ryan worked as a speechwriter for Kemp, the Republican vice presidential candidate in the 1996 United States presidential election, and later worked as legislative director for US Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. In 1998, he ran for Congress.
At an Atlas Society meeting celebrating Ayn Rand's life in 2005, Ryan said that "The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand", and "I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are. It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff." In response to criticism from Catholic leaders, in 2012 Ryan distanced himself from Rand's Objectivist philosophy, telling National Review, "I reject her philosophy. It's an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview", and noting that his views were more aligned with those of the Roman Catholic philosopher and saint, Thomas Aquinas, than Ayn Rand.
U.S. House of Representatives
Political positions of Paul Ryan
Ryan has sided with a majority of his party in 93% of House votes he has participated in.
Following his first election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1998, he had a Walk-in Delivery Van converted into a “Mobile Constituent Service Center” that allowed him and his staff to meet with his constituents at rural locations across Wisconsin's 1st congressional district.
Key votes & events
In 2002, Ryan voted in favor of the Iraq War resolution, authorizing President George W. Bush to use military force in Iraq. In 2003, Ryan voted in favor of the Medicare Part D prescription drug expansion. In 2004 and 2005, after the reelection of Bush, Ryan pushed the Bush administration to propose the privatization of Social Security; Ryan's proposal was ultimately not fully supported by the Administration and it failed. After the next election, he was chosen as the ranking member of the House Budget Committee.
In 2008, Ryan voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Wall Street bailout that precipitated the Tea Party movement, and the bailout of GM and Chrysler. In 2010, The Daily Telegraph ranked Ryan the ninth most influential American conservative. In 2011, Ryan was selected to deliver the Republican response to the State of the Union address. In 2012, Ryan accused the nation's top military leaders of using "smoke and mirrors" to remain under budget limits passed by Congress. Ryan later said that he misspoke on the issue and called General Martin Dempsey to apologize for his comments.
Roadmap for America's Future
Paul Ryan speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. on February 10, 2011.
On May 21, 2008, Ryan introduced H.R. 6110, titled "Roadmap for America's Future Act of 2008." This proposed legislation outlined changes to entitlement spending, notably major alterations in Medicare. The Roadmap found only eight sponsors and did not move past committee.
On April 1, 2009, Ryan introduced his alternative to the 2010 United States federal budget. This alternative budget would have eliminated the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, lowered the top tax rate to 25%, introduced an 8.5% value-added consumption tax, and imposed a five-year spending freeze on all discretionary spending. It would also have replaced Medicare. Instead, it proposed that starting in 2021, the federal government would no longer pay for Medicare benefits for persons born after 1975, and would instead pay a fixed sum in the form of a voucher for the Medicare beneficiary to buy private insurance with. The plan attracted criticism since the voucher payments would not be set to increase as medical costs increase, leaving beneficiaries partially uninsured. Ryan's proposed budget would also have allowed taxpayers to opt out of the federal income taxation system with itemized deductions, and instead pay a flat 10 percent of adjusted gross income up to $100,000 and 25 percent on any remaining income. Ryan's proposed budget was heavily criticized by opponents for the lack of concrete numbers. It was ultimately rejected in the house by a vote of 293-137, with 38 Republicans in opposition.
In late January 2010, Ryan released a new version of his Roadmap The modified plan would: give across the board tax cuts by reducing income tax rates; eliminate income taxes on capital gains, dividends, and interest; and abolish the corporate income tax, estate tax, and alternative minimum tax. The plan would privatize a portion of Social Security, eliminate the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance, and privatize Medicare.
On April 15, 2011, the House passed the Ryan Plan for 2012 by a vote of 235-193. Four Republicans joined all House Democrats in voting against it.[49] A month later, the bill died in the Senate by a vote of 57-40, with five Republicans and most Democrats in opposition.
Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman criticized the contention that Ryan's plan would reduce the deficit, alleging that it only considered proposed spending cuts and failed to take into account tax changes. According to Krugman, Ryan's plan "would raise taxes for 95 percent of the population" and produce a $4 trillion revenue loss over ten years from tax cuts for the rich. Krugman went on to label the proposed spending cuts a "sham" because they depended on making a severe cut in domestic discretionary spending without specifying the programs to be cut, and on "dismantling Medicare as we know it," which is politically unrealistic.
In response to Krugman, former American Enterprise Institute scholar Ted Gayer wrote a more positive assessment of the Ryan plan. Gayer agreed that, as written, the plan would cause a $4 trillion revenue shortfall over 10 years. Gayer concluded that "Ryan’s vision of broad-based tax reform, which essentially would shift us toward a consumption tax... makes a useful contribution to this debate." Conservative author Ramesh Ponnuru, writing in National Review, argued that the revenue loss to which Krugman refers is based on a comparison between Ryan's plan and current law, which "includes middle-class tax increases... cuts in payment to Medicare providers... [and] the expansion of the Alternative Minimum Tax."
Rick Foster, the chief actuary of Medicare, said of Ryan's plan for reducing Medicare costs: "Now, with either a voucher system that puts a lot of pressure on what you can buy for health insurance or to a somewhat lesser extent the payment updates for Medicare providers or certain other kinds of things, if you can put that pressure on the research and development community, you might have a fighting chance of changing the nature of new medical technology in a way that makes lower costs like this possible and more sustainable. I would say that the Roadmap has that potential. There is some potential for the Affordable Care Act price reductions, although I’m a little less confident about that."
Ryan's second budget plan
Paul Ryan speaking with President Barack Obama during the nationally televised bipartisan meeting on health insurance reform in Washington, D.C. on February 25, 2010.
At the end of March 2012, the House of Representatives passed a newer version of Ryan's budget plan for fiscal year 2013 along partisan lines, 228 yeas to 191 nays; ten Republicans voted against bill, along with all the House Democrats. Ryan's budget would reduce all discretionary spending in the budget from 12.5% of GDP in 2011 to 3.75% of GDP in 2050. This goal has been criticized as unrealistic since it includes spending on defense, which has never fallen below 3% of GDP. Congressman Justin Amash, a Republican from Michigan criticized Ryan's budget for insufficient cuts, its continuation of deficit spending through 2022 and beyond, and its exemption of military spending from reductions. His budget has also been criticized because it would not balance the budget until 2035. Marc Goldwein, the policy directory for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget stated "We may never, as a country, have a balanced budget again, And you know what? We don't have to." Ryan saw this as evidence of the severity of the deficit crisis.
The 2012 Ryan budget also received criticism from elements of the Catholic Church, specifically from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and from faculty and administrators of Georgetown University. In its letter to Rep. Ryan, the group of Georgetown faculty and administrators criticized the Ryan budget as trying to "to dismantle government programs and abandon the poor to their own devices," going on to say that Catholic teaching "demands that higher levels of government provide help—"subsidium"—when communities and local governments face problems beyond their means to address such as economic crises, high unemployment, endemic poverty and hunger." The letter also criticizes Ryan for his attempts at "gutting government programs" and states that Ryan is "profoundly misreading Church teaching." A statement issued by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops criticized the Ryan budget in similar terms. Ryan rejected the bishops' criticism that his budget plans would disproportionately cut programs that "serve poor and vulnerable people."
In May 2012, Ryan voted for H.R. 4310 which would increase spending on defense, Afghanistan and various weapon systems to the level of $642 billion - $8 billion more than previous spending levels.
Political campaigns
Electoral history of Paul Ryan
Ryan was first elected to the House in 1998, when two-term incumbent Mark Neumann retired from his seat in order to make a bid (unsuccessful) for the Senate. Ryan won the Republican primary over 29-year-old pianist Michael J. Logan of Twin Lakes and the general election against Democratic opponent Lydia Spottswood. Ryan successfully defended his seat against Democratic challenger Jeffrey C. Thomas in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006. In 2002, Ryan had also faced Libertarian candidate George Meyers.
Personal life
Ryan married Janna Little, a tax attorney, in December 2000.The Ryans live in Janesville with their three children Elizabeth Anne, Charles Wilson, and Samuel Lowery.Ryan is a Roman Catholic and is a member of St. John Vianney's Church.
Ryan, a fitness enthusiast and fan of the Green Bay Packers, promotes fitness as a daily routine for young people. Ryan, whose father, grandfather and great-grandfather all died of heart attacks in their 50s, has said he is careful about what he eats, performs an intense cross-training routine known as P90X most mornings, and has made close to 40 climbs of Colorado's "Fourteeners"
Via the Wikipedia
The first four days of Gallup Daily tracking after Romney's announcement show 47% of registered voters saying they would vote for Romney and 45% for Barack Obama if the election were held today. The four days prior showed Romney at 46% and Obama at 45%.
