Paul Ryan
Paul Ryan was Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019 and the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 2012, and for a decade was his party's leading voice on fiscal policy. Born in Janesville, Wisconsin in 1970, he found his father dead of a heart attack when he was sixteen, and used Social Security survivor benefits to help pay for college — a fact often noted against his later positions on entitlements. He studied economics and political science at Miami University in Ohio, worked as a speechwriter and aide, including for Jack Kemp, whose optimistic supply-side conservatism he took as his model, and was elected to Congress in 1998 at twenty-eight. As chairman of the House Budget Committee from 2011 he produced a series of budget resolutions proposing to convert Medicare into a system of premium support, block-grant Medicaid, cut discretionary spending and lower top tax rates. They passed the House repeatedly and never became law, but they defined the party's fiscal position and provided the Democrats with material for a decade. Mitt Romney selected him in 2012; the ticket lost. He became Speaker in October 2015, reluctantly, after John Boehner resigned under pressure from the House Freedom Caucus. His speakership coincided with Donald Trump's rise, which he handled uneasily — condemning particular statements as textbook racism while continuing to support the ticket and, in office, the agenda. His principal legislative achievement was the 2017 tax act, which cut the corporate rate to twenty-one per cent. The repeal of the Affordable Care Act failed in the Senate. He did not seek re-election in 2018 and left with deficits substantially higher than when he arrived.
- Lived: 1970 CE – ?
- Nationality: American
- Roles: congressman
