When Rep. Paul Ryan unveiled his “Path to Prosperity” budget blueprint in April 2011, the ambitious young chairman of the House Budget Committee was the toast of the Beltway wonk scene.
The seven-term Wisconsin Republican did the think-tank circuit and worked the Sunday talk shows to promote his plan to steer the country away from the fiscal cliff.
And when Ryan personally tangled with Barack Obama over healthcare reform at the president’s 2010 summit, it was mostly Beltway types and political junkies enduring the six-hour televised event.
But with Ryan coming out of the Capitol to become a household name on the national trail (soon, that is — 39 percent of those polled in a Gallup survey released today had never heard of him), becoming the first House member to get a VP nod since Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, it’s likely to have repercussions in these corridors.
The Democrats will have the open window to bring actions of the Republican-controlled House into the national presidential campaign in a way that it couldn’t with a senator or governor on the ticket. Conversely, by taking their nearly two years of majority efforts to force a balanced budget, House Republicans could add gains to their steady climb out of the rock-bottom congressional approval rating of 10 percent measured by Gallup in February.
Ryan’s step into political stardom also reflects brightly on the GOP’s Young Guns program that he founded with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to build up the Republican majority. In the 2010 midterm rout, 62 of 92 candidates in the Young Guns program won House seats, including Reps. Allen West (R-Fla.) and Steve Pearce (R-N.M.).
After that Tea Party cycle in which the grassroots advocated sending fresh faces to Washington, the right is now being rallied by a Hill denizen through-and-though in Ryan.
“What I know in Paul Ryan is he is an individual that came to Washington for a cause. And it was really a cause to try and get this country back on track,” Cantor said Saturday on CNN. “From the days he and I used to sit on the Ways and Means Committee together, we would sit there for hours and talk about his plans for the future and how it is that he thought that we ought to lead, in terms of tax reform, in terms of trying to get the debt under control in this country.”
Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-N.Y.) told CNN that “he’s one of the young guns who inspired so many of us like me, a citizen legislator, to run for office.”
“He is a great friend and mentor to members of the freshman class,” Hayworth said. “…And he has been the architect of and our teacher and mentor, he’s been architect of a budget plan that actually will work for the United States.”
But is Ryan the “ideological leader of Republicans in Congress” as President Obama claimed in his first remarks about the running mate selection?
He’s not a member of Michele Bachmann’s (R-Minn.) Tea Party Caucus, despite assertions that he’s the face of the Tea Party in Congress as he’s a popular speaker at grassroots rallies. He is a member of the conservative Republican Study Committee, a much larger caucus than Bachmann’s group, which is chaired by another conservative who is not a member of the Tea Party Caucus, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
“[Ryan] has always been a principled voice for positive solutions that will help strengthen our economy and build a future of opportunity and prosperity,” said Tea Party Caucus member Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), who leader the Republican Policy Committee. “There has been no greater ally in Congress for those of us fighting to change the reckless habits of the Obama administration.”
Even if some onlookers’ ideas of the “ideological leader” of an ideal GOP range from housecleaner Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to the hawkish Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) to social conservative Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), it can be safely said that the budget mantra by which Republicans this Congress have been guided is Ryan’s “Prosperity.”
House Republicans’ FY 2013 budget resolution passed in March 228-191, with 10 Republicans voting against it. And Ryan’s drive to avoid fiscal ruin a la Greece has earned due respect from GOP lawmakers in the upper chamber, as well, where Democrats haven’t adopted a budget in more than 1,200 days.
“I served with Paul Ryan in the House and have a tremendous amount of respect for him,” said Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.). “He understands that America cannot afford to continue to go down a path of record debt and deficits, and he has real solutions to get our nation back on a path of prosperity.”
Though not much gets done in Congress after recess and before the presidential election anyway, the Budget Committee will be missing its leader as Republicans and Democrats in both chambers will be trying to avert the budget sequestration with devastating defense cuts and will be fighting over the extension of the Bush-era tax cuts.
The senior Democrat on the panel, Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), said he gets along well personally with Ryan but sees attack ground in his “Path to Prosperity.”
“Look, I work with Paul Ryan. We get along very well personally. We have very tough and spirited debates, but they’ve always been civil debates in the budget committee,” Van Hollen said on MSNBC. “Look, there’s plenty to go on with respect to the ideas in terms of a target-rich environment, because when you dig down deep in the Ryan budget, it really is bad for the vast majority of the country.”
Vice-chairman of the committee is Scott Garrett (R-N.J.). The panel hasn’t met since it marked up the Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012 on June 27; that passed Congress and was signed by the president last week.
The familiarity of script in battling Ryan’s budget plan gives Democrats a head start as they fight against the Ryan-Romney ticket. But the plans of a vice presidential candidate have greater national traction than inside-the-Beltway policy skirmishes that don’t garner much interest past the Potomac.
Last year, as part of the “Mediscare” campaign attempting to discredit Ryan’s proposal to reform the entitlement program, a liberal PAC released an infamous TV ad showing a Ryan doppelgänger pushing a wheelchair-bound granny off a cliff. In the Republican primaries, presidential hopefuls were asked what they thought of Ryan’s budget plan. Romney says he has his own budget plan, but it’s his running mate’s that will be the topic on the campaign trail.
Opponents will also be blaming Ryan for the actions of the Republican caucus as a whole, like the farm bill that wasn’t brought to the House floor before Congress left for the summer recess.
“Unfortunately, right now, too many members of Congress are blocking the farm bill from becoming law,” Obama told a crowd in Council Bluffs, Iowa, today. “…So if you happen to see Congressman Ryan, tell him how important this farm bill is to Iowa and our rural communities.”
Ryan’s budget proposal cuts food stamps by more than twice the reductions in the Senate’s farm bill.
It highlighted how the nomination of a House member to the national ticket could breathe new life into Obama’s refrain that Republicans in Congress are a do-nothing bunch who need a to-do list.
House Republicans, though, are confident that even middle-of-the-road voters will look at the record of what the budget chairman has been doing in Congress and come away with a positive impression.
“He has more good ideas about breakfast than most people have in their entire career,” said Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) on CNN. “What most independents are looking for, they are tired of this these political attacks and want new government ideas.”
“That’s what Paul is going to bring to the table,” Forbes added. “I think it’s going to excite them.”
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