Born and raised in Janesville, Wisconsin, Ryan graduated from Miami University in Ohio and reportedly worked as a marketing consultant to an earth-moving company run by a branch of his family. 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 also as a speech writer for former U.S. Representative and 1996 Republican Vice Presidential Nominee Jack Kemp of New York. He won a 1998 election to succeed two-term Representative Mark Neumann in the United States House of Representatives.
Ryan is the chairman of the House Budget Committee, where he played a prominent public role in drafting and promoting the Republican Party's long-term budget proposal. He introduced the plan, The Path to Prosperity, in April 2011 to counter the budget proposal of President Barack Obama. Ryan is one of the three co-founders of the Young Guns Program, an electoral recruitment and campaign effort by House Republicans.
Early life, education and career
The youngest child of Betty and Paul Murray Ryan, a lawyer, Ryan was born and raised in Janesville, Wisconsin. Ryan's mother is an outdoors enthusiast who led her husband and four kids (a sister, Janet, and two brothers, Tobin and Stan) on regular trips to hike and ski in the Colorado Rockies. He is a fifth-generation Wisconsin and Janesville native and a great-grandson of Patrick W. Ryan, who founded the Ryan Incorporated Central construction business in 1884.
Ryan attended Joseph A. Craig High School in Janesville and was sixteen years old when he found his father in bed, dead of a heart attack at age 55. Ryan's grandfather had also died of a heart attack at age 57, as had his great-grandfather also similarly died of a heart attack at age 59. Ryan began collecting his Social Security survivor's benefits until age eighteen, which he saved for college tuition and expenses.
Ryan briefly worked during college for the Oscar Mayer meat and cold cut production company as a Wienermobile driver. He went on to graduate from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, with a B.A. in economics and political science in 1992. Ryan also studied at the Washington Semester program at American University. Ryan was a member of the Delta Tau Delta social fraternity.
Ryan worked within the private sector as a marketing consultant to an earth-moving company run by a branch of his family after he returned to Wisconsin from Washington, D.C. .
Early political career
During his junior year at Miami University, Ryan worked as a college intern opening mail for the foreign affairs advisor assigned to Wisconsin Sen. Bob Kasten. In his early years as a D.C. staffer, Ryan moonlighted on Capitol Hill as a waiter at the Tortilla Coast restaurant and as a fitness trainer at Washington Sport and Health Club, among various other side jobs.
Out of fear that Ryan "...was destined to become a ski bum", Betty Ryan reportedly nudged her son to accept another congressional position as a staff economist attached to the office of U.S. Senator Bob Kasten.
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 Minnesota Rep. Vin Weber.
Ryan worked as a speechwriter for Vice-Presidential candidate Kemp during the 1996 United States presidential election and later worked as legislative director for U.S. Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. Ryan then returned to Wisconsin where he worked as a consultant to an earth-moving company and began campaigning for the 1998 U.S. congressional elections.Ryan is a fitness freak and promotes fitness as a daily routine for today's youth. He works out actively using the famous P90x fitness program.
U.S. House of Representatives
Following his first election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1998, one of Ryan's priorities as a new congressman was to convert a truck into a rolling district office. This allowed him to keep regular congressional office hours with his constituents at various and far-flung locations across the Wisconsin First U.S. House District.
Ryan is one of the three founding members of the House GOP Young Guns Program.
In 2008, Ryan voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Wall Street bailout that precipitated the Tea Party, and the bailout of GM and Chrysler.
In 2010, The Daily Telegraph ranked Ryan the ninth most influential US conservative. In 2011, Ryan was selected to deliver the Republican response to the State of the Union address.
Roadmap for America's Future
Ryan speaking at CPAC in February 2011.
On May 21, 2008, Ryan introduced H.R. 6110, titled "Roadmap for America's Future Act of 2008". This proposed legislation outlined a plan to deal with entitlement issues. Its stated objectives were to ensure universal access to health insurance; strengthen Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security; lift the debt from future generations; and promote economic growth and job creation in America. It did not move past committee.
On April 1, 2009, Ryan introduced his alternative to the 2010 United States federal budget. This proposed alternative 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 the Medicare system. Instead, it proposed that starting in 2021, the federal government would pay part of the cost of private medical insurance for individuals turning 65. 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." It would give across the board tax cuts by reducing income tax rates; eliminating income taxes on capital gains, dividends, and interest; and abolishing the corporate income tax, the estate tax, and the 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 by a vote of 235-193. No Democrats voted for it, and only four Republicans voted against. A month later, the bill died in the Senate by a vote of 57-40.
Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman took issue with the contention that Ryan's plan would reduce the deficit, alleging that it only considered proposed spending cuts and failed to take into account the tax changes. According to Krugman, Ryan's plan "would raise taxes for 95 percent of the population" but would produce a $4 trillion revenue loss over ten years because of the 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, economist and former American Enterprise Institute scholar Ted Gayer was more positive toward the Ryan plan. Gayer agreed that, as written, the plan would cause a $4 trillion revenue shortfall over 10 years. He noted, however, that Ryan had expressed a willingness to consider raising the rates in his tax plan. 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."
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." He added that "current law automatically raises the tax rates to pre-Bush levels in 2013...so if you're comparing the tax level with current law, Ryan's plan represents a tax cut" and "the CBO's actual projections for the Ryan plan show a debt level in 2021 that is $4.7 trillion lower than its projections for Obama's budgets."
Rick Foster, the chief actuary of Medicare, endorsed Ryan's plan as the best way to save Medicare from going bankrupt: "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."
Political campaigns
Ryan was first elected to the House in 1998 when two-term incumbent Mark Neumann retired from his seat in order to make an unsuccessful bid for the Senate. Ryan won both a 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.
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