McCain's Veepstakes: Paul Ryan

Human Events, May 5, 2008 by Gizzi, John

Fifth in a Series

(This is the fifth Veepstakes article. Already profiled have been Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and former Ohio Rep. Rob Portman.)

Earlier this year, when I asked Rep. Phil English (R.-Pa.) who was his choice for a running mate with John McCain, he quickly replied, "Paul Ryan," His naming his GOP colleague from Wisconsin and fellow House Ways and Means Committee member gave me a jolt.

Paul Ryan? At 38 and after a decade in Congress from Wisconsin's 1st District (Janesville-Kenosha), Ryan is not exactly a household word. A graduate of Miami University (Ohio), Ryan worked as speechwriter for Jack Kemp and William Bennett at their "Empower America" organization, and was then legislative director for Sen. Sam Brownback (R.- Kan.). Anticipating that Wisconsin Rep. Mark Neumann would run for the Senate in 1998, Ryan moved back to his hometown of Janesville and set up a campaign that allowed him to easily win nomination and then election to Congress with 57% of the vote. As a member of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, he has been a force behind tax cuts and trimming discretionary spending. Ryan (lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 93%) has also been a strong booster of gunowners' rights, pro-life legislation, and tougher measures on illegal immigration.

Lets Not Become France

A man with an excellent record, ail right, but at first impression maybe not yet ready for presidential politics. English disagrees. As he put it, "Paul is Catholic, from the Rust Belt, and has the economic credentials Sen. McCain needs." Other Republican backbenchers agree, and Ryan-for-Veep talk is increasing in the House GOP Conference.

So what does Ryan himself think of this? "I'm flattered," he told me and my HUMAN EVENTS colleagues Allan Ryskind and Jim Seminara recently. "But that and SO cents gets me a cup of coffee. I don't take these things too seriously."

What Ryan does take seriously is the agenda he deals with on the Budget and Ways and Means Committees, an agenda that, in his words, "is rooted in principle that solves our problems of debt, of taxes, of winning globalization. And when I look at the fact that when my three kids, who are 3, 4, and 6 years old, are my age, under the current projections the government will be twice what it is today. And that's unsustainable. We will become France. France is a nice country, a nice place to visit, but it's not a great country. And we will become France in the not-to-distant future unless we change course. That's why I'm here, to try to change that trajectory."

Social Security is a case in point, says Ryan, and "the easy one to fix. You know, money in, money out. It's pretty simple."

Having held 64 town meetings on the issue at home and introduced at least three bills for Social Security reform, Ryan believes that "the best way to fix Social Security is large personal retirement accounts, which grow at an average of 5 or 6 % a year. And over a person's lifetime, the benefit obligation obviously shifts from the government to the account. That's good for many reasons. For economic reasons, it's good because the power of compound interest is harnessed on behalf of the individual. It's also good for political and philosophical reasons, because people become more independent. People become more self-reliant. People become owners of our free-enterprise system. Actually, there isn't an idea out there that more decentralizes the concentration of wealth in America than large personal retirement accounts for Social Security."

Alternative Tax Plan

On the current tax front, Ryan is a strong booster of McCain's proposal to drop the gasoline tax for the summer and, on behalf of the Republican Study Committee, Ryan has introduced the Tax Fair Choice Act. As he described it us, "It has an alternative tax system you can choose to have if you want to. Right now, you have to fill out two codes: the AMT and the 1040 code. Under our bill, you can pick and then go. You can use the current system, or the new system, which has a top rate of 25%. And that's what our proposal was. And I'm really happy to see Sen. McCain start talking real tax reform. I think he just began the dialogue on tax reform today, and that's a good step in the right direction as well."

In taking this position, Ryan stands for neither the flat tax popularized by Steve Forbes, nor the "fair tax" promoted in the '08 Republican primaries by Mike Huckabee.

"Going from one system to a new system inevitably involves clumsy transition decisions.," Ryan notes. "The best way to do that is to allow the individual to choose how and when to transition from the old, clumsy code we have to a new entrepreneurial code, a low-tax code, and that's why we have a ten-year transition system in our program.

"At the end of the day, I think our taxes should tax income once at its source, and never again. We should not have these double and triple layers of taxation on capital like we have in the code today. And those ought to be eliminated. So I think George W. Bush did a lot of good work on this. I think where they went is probably the best, most intelligent way to go. My friends [who support] the Fair Tax are onto a good idea, but unfortunately, just watching the way this place works, I fear that we'll just look like Europe, and we'll have an income tax with a sales tax on top of it.."