{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://paulryan.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=355490", "Ryan Is Again in the Forefront for the G.O.P.", "2013-10-10", "2013", "2013-10", "Republican", "House", "WI", "Paul Ryan", "R000570", "paulryan.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "By JONATHAN WEISMAN, The New York Times\nWASHINGTON \u2014 Representative Paul D. Ryan may have temporarily receded into the Capitol shadows after his stinging vice-presidential defeat in November, but he remains a powerful presence among House Republicans, earning the respect of hard-line conservatives for his budget blueprint and the trust of anxious moderates for his pragmatism. \nNow, the impasse that has shuttered much of the government and steered the nation toward a default has offered the Wisconsin congressman a new opening to reassert himself \u2014 and suddenly a man who seemed in danger of being eclipsed as the face of his party has re-emerged as essential to its rescue. \n\u201cI want to get to a budget agreement,\u201d Mr. Ryan said bluntly on Thursday, after House Republican leaders latched onto his plan to offer a short-term increase in the debt ceiling as a way forward on deficit reduction and tax reform talks. \u201cWe think this takes us in the right direction.\u201d \nMr. Ryan, 43, has immense credibility with conservatives for his \u201cPath to Prosperity\u201d budget, which proposed politically risky Medicare changes and deep tax cuts. Moderates see Mr. Ryan, who has broken with some conservatives over immigration, as a lawmaker with some flexibility. In many respects, his standing exceeds that of the party\u2019s titular leader, Speaker John A. Boehner. Perhaps most important, Democrats believe that when Mr. Ryan drafts a plan, he can actually deliver the votes. They hold no such confidence in Mr. Boehner. \n\u201cHe\u2019s still the intellectual center of Republicans in the House,\u201d said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, who serves as Mr. Ryan\u2019s bridge between the House Budget and Appropriations Committees. \u201cHe\u2019s a guy who commands universal respect in the conference and the trust of leadership, and he has credibility with the other side.\u201d \nMr. Ryan\u2019s association with the new urgency to find a way out of the fiscal crisis \u201cquite frankly is a sign to Democrats that we\u2019re awfully serious about this,\u201d Mr. Cole said. \nSenator Patty Murray of Washington, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Budget Committee, said her House counterpart\u2019s low profile after last year\u2019s loss reflected a pragmatic strategy of \u201cnot being the face of the flamethrowers\u201d in the House. \nBut now, Mr. Ryan suddenly is everywhere, as his party tries to resolve the impasse those \u201cflamethrowers\u201d brought about. An opinion piece he wrote in The Wall Street Journal this week laid out what has now become the House Republican plan: a debt ceiling increase tied to changes to Medicare and Medigap plans that would save more than enough money to ease some of the across-the-board cuts to domestic and defense programs; a fast track for the comprehensive simplification of the tax code; and a demand for immediate, serious and structured negotiations with the White House and Democratic Senate. \nThe fact that Mr. Ryan\u2019s plan quite obviously made no mention of the health care law as a bargaining chip quickly drew him scorn from some on the right, but to Democrats and more moderate Republicans, the sidelining of the health care fight immediately gave the plan credibility. \nHe marketed his idea on Wednesday to the House\u2019s hard-line conservatives in the Republican Study Committee, getting enough favorable reaction to pull in the Republican leadership. On Thursday, after Mr. Boehner presented it to the full Republican conference, it became the official Republican position. As Mr. Boehner laid it out to the public, Mr. Ryan stood silently behind him. \nOn Friday, he will take his message to the Values Voters Summit, a meeting of social conservatives. But according to an advance text of his remarks, he will add words of caution: \u201cThis president, he won\u2019t agree to everything we need to do. A budget agreement \u2014 with this president and this Senate \u2014 it won\u2019t solve all of our problems.\u00a0 But I hope it\u2019s a start. I hope we can get a down payment on our debt.\u201d \nRepublicans and Democrats said Thursday that the success or failure of this new path forward will rest on Mr. Ryan\u2019s shoulders. Republicans hope that with Mr. Ryan leading the charge, Washington will finally grapple with the true drivers of the federal budget deficit: entitlement programs like Medicare that are swelling as the population ages. Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said conversations between Mr. Ryan and the senators he will need on his side had already begun. \nDemocrats, closely examining the outlines of the Ryan plan, say he is showing a new modesty and a narrower vision than the one rejected by American voters in the 2012 presidential campaign. Back then, and even earlier this year, Mr. Ryan championed converting Medicare into a voucherlike program in which beneficiaries would be given fixed premium subsidies they would use to buy private health insurance. \nNow he is talking about means-testing Medicare to make richer beneficiaries pick up more of the tab and ensuring that taxpayers do not subsidize the private Medigap plans purchased by upper-income recipients to augment Medicare coverage. Versions of both of those proposals are in Mr. Obama\u2019s budget for the current fiscal year. \nBy not trying to do too much, Mr. Ryan may be able to do just enough, Ms. Murray said. In 2011, Mr. Ryan conspicuously declined to serve on a special select committee empaneled in the shadow of a debt ceiling fight that year to find a bipartisan path forward, worrying that the effort would tarnish his ambitions for higher office. \nAfter Mr. Ryan became the face of his party\u2019s most ambitious \u2014 and to critics, most radical \u2014 fiscal plans during the 2012 campaign, Ms. Murray and other Democrats groaned late last year when Mr. Boehner made him the leadership\u2019s point man to resolve the \u201cfiscal cliff,\u201d the automatic tax increases and spending cuts that were to take place Jan. 1 if Congress failed to act. \n\u201cHis vision was actually on the ballot, and Americans decided to go in a different direction,\u201d Ms. Murray said in November. \nMs. Murray and others have changed their assessment of the man after dozens of private meetings aimed at finding a bipartisan path forward. Democrats have been pressing for formal negotiations since April, when both chambers passed budget and tax policy blueprints that were starkly at odds. Ms. Murray and Mr. Ryan have believed for months that despite the vast policy gap, they could find common ground. The coming weeks may test whether that is true. \n\u201cPatty and I have a good relationship,\u201d Mr. Ryan said Thursday. \u201cWe don\u2019t agree on much but we get along well.\u201d \nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/11/us/politics/ryan-is-again-in-the-forefront-for-the-gop.html", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://paulryan.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=355490"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.009318046271801, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}