Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) owes a lot to the late Jack Kemp, Ryan’s former boss at Empower America. In a published remembrance of Kemp, Ryan said that while Ronald Reagan motivated him to get into politics, Kemp inspired him.
Indeed, Ryan’s “Roadmap to America’s Future” and “Path to Prosperity” budget resolution are models of Kemp’s supply-side thinking about incentivizing economic growth through government policies. It was thought that, at most, Ryan might entertain becoming the 2012 GOP presidential nominee’s running mate if the right candidate asked. Much like Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ryan is a methodical politician of substance who is purposefully navigating his career trajectory. Unlike others, Ryan and Rubio seemed committed to establishing a real record before running for higher offices.
But reality may be pushing up Ryan’s time frame. With the surprise announcement that Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) will not seek reelection next year, Ryan has an opportunity not unlike Jack Kemp faced as a rising New York congressman in the late 1970’s. Then, Kemp decided not to challenge liberal Republican incumbent Jacob Javits in the 1980 GOP primary. Had he done so and won, Kemp would have significantly increased his national profile by holding a statewide office at the beginning of the Reagan era.
Of course, to run Kemp would have had to split time between promoting his Senate candidacy and his landmark Kemp-Roth tax cuts – the soon-to-be centerpiece of Reagan’s economic recovery plan. Like Kemp, Ryan has a game-changing economic program to fight for this next cycle, but unlike his former mentor, I think the odds are very good that Ryan will decide to run for the Senate. If Democrats are going to make Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” a major campaign theme next year, why not see if Wisconsin voters are ready to promote their state’s best presidential contender to statewide status?
And the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee described himself as having been mentored by the late Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), believing in “a prosperous opportunity society built atop a solid safety net.”
“I am not a laissez-faire, Hobbsian libertarian,” he told me. “I believe in a circumscribed safety net, one that helps people get back on their feet and is there for people who can’t help themselves. But I believe in a pro-growth, limited-government, free-enterprise society that encourages people to make the most of their lives.”
Anyone else for a one-on-one debate between President Barack Obama and Rep. Ryan on healthcare reform next January?
As usual, Jay Cost has an eyebrow raising piece of analysis – today discussing in Technicolor detail how President Barack Obama’s narrow geographic popularity foretold of a need to govern from the center of the country; not the center of his party.
What he should have done instead was disarm his opponents. If he had built initial policy proposals from the middle, he could have wooed the moderate flank of the Republican party, marginalized the conservatives, and alleviated the concerns of those gettable voters in the South and the Midwest. This is precisely what Bill Clinton did between 1995 and 2000, and it is what the President’s promises of “post-partisanship” suggested.
Our system of government can only produce policy when geographically broad coalitions favor it. The Senate, more than any other institution, forces such breadth. Obama created breadth the wrong way. He watered down initially liberal legislation to prompt just enough moderate Democrats to sign on. Instead, he should have built policy from the center, then worked to pick up enough votes on either side. The left would have been disappointed, but the right would have been marginalized and, most importantly, Independent voters – who have abandoned the President in droves – might still be on board.
One of the great ironies of liberal politicians is that they so often discount the yen of conservative intellectuals to participate in policy making. People like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) are driven by ideas, and enjoy the process of fashioning policies that get as many of them enacted as possible.
But they are not necessarily “my-way-or-the-highway” types. Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future is a multi-decade plan for balancing the budget. Implicit in its longevity is Ryan’s willingness to work out compromises that preserve Social Security and Medicare while making them fiscally sound. For his part, Gingrich has always been the kind of politician willing to hammer out solutions with the other side, as he attempted to do with Bill Clinton.
People wonder why we don’t have bipartisan breakthroughs anymore. In part, it’s because politicians like Barack Obama don’t have the political sense to “spread the success around” turning their adversaries into cooperators.
In the video below Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is out stumping for his Roadmap for America’s Future, a comprehensive reform plan that actually focuses on reforming existing government policies and programs; not creating new ones. Early on he addresses the observation that politicians who put out detailed plans get criticized, and sometimes lose their jobs. Ryan would rather take the chance that commonsense people are ready to have a real discussion about getting America’s fiscal house in order.
May the 2010 midterm elections bring more people like Paul Ryan to Congress.
In the wake of the uproar, Republican leaders tried to distance themselves from the proposal, emphasizing that while it contained good ideas, Ryan’s plan wasn’t the official Republican budget. In an election year during which the GOP is poised to make big gains, Republicans don’t want to give Democrats an easy opportunity to paint them as the party keen on destroying Social Security and Medicare. But if Republicans are to regain any credibility as a party that wants actually to limit government (as opposed to just talk about it when in the minority), then they can’t shy away from this debate. The looming fiscal crisis is too severe, it’s approaching too soon, and it’s far too big of a threat to the American way of life.
Thanks to the angst of a fretful nation, Republicans will probably regain control of the House and perhaps the Senate this November. What they need, however, is a governing mandate. The only way they can claim one is to have a clearly defined set of principles and goals that they can run on and win with this cycle. The 1994 “Contract with America” worked. So could Ryan’s Roadmap. Getting specific on the best way forward to secure America’s future is a fight worth having.
Today’s Washington Post carries an op-ed from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), dissecting this afternoon’s farcical “mark-up” session in the House Budget Committee. On display will be Obamacare in the form of a “Reconciliation” vehicle. Like all other stops on the health care “reform” debate, there is almost no chance of Republicans getting in a word, much less an amendment.
No matter. Ryan is still promoting both his Roadmap for America’s Future and one of many pieces of targeted legislation Republicans have introduced to address the cost and quality of healthcare. Here is a link to the Patients Choice Act, a document that simply and clearly explains the concept of health care exchanges. The time it takes to read this brisk 13 pages will be better spent than all the detail-less drivel from breathless reporters repeating rumors of congressional whip counts.
As discussed previously by CFIF, Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) is getting some much deserved attention for his path breaking proposal, “A Roadmap for America’s Future.” The Roadmap lays out a comprehensive vision for matching spending on federal entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security with tax receipts. In other words, it offers specifics on the GOP’s long-stated aim to make government live within its means.
Of course, proposing an elegant, tough-minded legislative solution in an election year doesn’t win many co-sponsors. In Ryan’s case, he’s got 9. The folks at Newsweek noticed and are calling out Republicans for their lack of agreement on a substantive way forward. Being a man of substance and conviction isn’t easy in Washington, D.C., especially for a member of Congress. That Paul Ryan is willing to put his policies where his rhetoric is deserves not only a nod, but broad based conservative support as well.
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