{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://paulryan.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=362223", "Paul Ryan, GOP\u2019s budget architect, sets his sights on fighting poverty and winning minds", "2013-11-18", "2013", "2013-11", "Republican", "House", "WI", "Paul Ryan", "R000570", "paulryan.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "By Lori Montgomery, the Washington Post\r\nPaul Ryan is ready to move beyond last year\u2019s failed presidential campaign and the budget committee chairmanship that has defined him to embark on an ambitious new project: Steering Republicans away from the angry, nativist inclinations of the tea party movement and toward the more inclusive vision of his mentor, the late Jack Kemp.\r\nSince February, Ryan (R-Wis.) has been quietly visiting inner-city neighborhoods with another old Kemp ally, Bob Woodson, the 76-year-old civil rights activist and anti-poverty crusader, to talk to ex-convicts and recovering addicts about the means of their salvation. \r\nRyan\u2019s staff, meanwhile, has been trolling center-right think tanks and intellectuals for ideas to replace the \u201cbureaucratic, top-down anti-poverty programs\u201d that Ryan blames for \u201cwrecking families and communities\u201d since Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty in 1964.\r\nNext year, for the 50th anniversary of that crusade, Ryan hopes to roll out an anti-poverty plan to rival his budgetary Roadmap for America\u2019s Future in scope and ambition. He is also writing a book about what\u2019s next for the GOP, recalling the 1979 tome that detailed Kemp\u2019s vision under the subtitle, \u201cThe Brilliant Young Congressman\u2019s Plan for a Return to Prosperity.\u201d\r\nRyan \u201chas always been more than the budget guy. His vision is much broader than that,\u201d said Bill Bennett, a conservative political theorist who worked with Kemp at Empower America, where Ryan got his start. \u201cYou can\u2019t be the governing party unless you offer people a way out of poverty.\u201d\r\nAdvisers say Ryan\u2019s immediate goal is to become chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee when Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) steps down in 2015. That would give him an ideal perch to advance an expanded agenda that combines an overhaul of the tax code and federal health and retirement programs with kinder, gentler policies to encourage work and upward mobility.\r\nBut Ryan has not ruled out a run for president, according to his closest advisers. On Saturday, he delivered the keynote address at the annual birthday bash of Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R). And last week, he told the Des Moines Register that he will give the race a \u201chard look\u201d after the 2014 midterms.\r\n\u201cWashington has gummed up the works,\u201d Ryan told the Iowa crowd. \u201cIt\u2019s made it harder for people to get ahead, and the idea of upward mobility, of equal opportunity, is slipping farther and farther away from people who haven\u2019t seen it for generations. . . . We can restore America as the party of equal opportunity to show how these ideas can prevail.\u201d \r\nAll this has left the Washington budget battle feeling like an afterthought in Ryan\u2019s life, even as he takes center stage on a panel tasked with preventing another politically damaging government shutdown in January. Democrats hope Ryan will agree to targeted tax hikes and establish himself as a pragmatic leader. \r\nBut Ryan has rejected that idea. Pete Wehner, a longtime informal adviser, said Ryan is unlikely to abandon a principle \u2014 no new taxes \u2014 that remains at the heart of his philosophy. \r\n\u201cPaul\u2019s not a dealmaker,\u201d Wehner said. \u201cAnd the next budget deal is not going to be a central element of Paul\u2019s legacy.\u201d\r\nRyan\u2019s new emphasis on social ills doesn\u2019t imply that he\u2019s willing to compromise with Democrats on spending more government money. His idea of a war on poverty so far relies heavily on promoting volunteerism and encouraging work through existing federal programs, including the tax code. That\u2019s a skewed version of Kempism, which recognizes that \u201cmillions of Americans look to government as a lifeline,\u201d said Bruce Bartlett, a historian who worked for Kemp and has become an acerbic critic of the modern GOP.\r\n\u201cThey want to care,\u201d Bartlett said of Ryan and modern Republicans. \u201cBut they\u2019re so imprisoned by their ideology that they can\u2019t offer anything meaningful.\u201d Ryan has explained the difference by noting that the national debt has grown enormously since Kemp ran for president in 1988, nearly doubling as a percentage of the economy.\r\nGOP targets perceptions \r\nRyan\u2019s interest in poverty dovetails with a larger effort to revamp the GOP, which has lost the popular vote in five of the past six presidential elections. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus commissioned an autopsy of the 2012 campaign that identified \u201cthe perception that the GOP does not care about people\u201d as \u201ca major deficiency,\u201d and recommended a renewed effort to \u201cbe the champion of those who seek to climb the economic ladder.\u201d\r\nSince then, the search has been on for a conservative response to rising income inequality and the record 15 percent of Americans who live in poverty. \r\nAt the Capitol last week, the conservative Heritage Foundation held a day-long anti-poverty forum to examine the historic rise in food-stamp dependency since the recession and methods of prison rehabilitation. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who led the push to defund Obama\u2019s new health-insurance initiative, gave the keynote address, arguing for a revival of \u201ccivil society,\u201d volunteerism and charity.\r\n\u201cThe focus on limiting government spending will continue to be important, but it\u2019s not enough,\u201d Lee said afterward. With Democrats in control of the Senate and the White House, \u201cit\u2019s easy for us to get stuck in the \u2018no\u2019 position. But the fact is we have to have a policy agenda.\u201d\r\nThat shift may be particularly critical for Ryan, 43. He rose to prominence as the author of an austere budget blueprint that calls for privatizing Medicare and sharply slowing federal spending on the poor. \r\nThen he joined the GOP ticket with Mitt Romney, who was cast by Democrats as an out-of-touch plutocrat. Romney\u2019s characterization of lower-income Americans \u2014 the \u201c47 percent\u201d \u2014 as \u201cvictims,\u201d \u201cdependent upon government\u201d and unwilling to \u201ctake personal responsibility and care for their lives\u201d was particularly devastating. \r\nPriebus, a fellow Wisconsinite who has known Ryan since their College Republican days, said that image will not stick to the affable, down-to-earth Ryan.\r\n\u201cPaul\u2019s his own person. He can be at the Kenosha County fair drinking Miller Lite in shorts and a T-shirt,\u201d Priebus said. Fighting dependence and improving opportunity \u201cwere always things that were on his agenda.\u201d\r\n\u201cPerhaps there were things stirred in the election that brought things to the top of the list for him,\u201d Priebus conceded. \u201cBut now he\u2019s got an elevated platform that gives him more horsepower to see some of these things through.\u201d\r\nRyan has tightly controlled his public statements since the election, and he declined to be interviewed for this story. However, four advisers who worked with him on the campaign said he was mortified by Romney\u2019s 47-percent remarks. Two of those advisers said Ryan spoke directly to Romney about it in mid-September 2012, soon after Mother Jones posted a video of the $50,000-a-plate Florida fundraiser where Romney seemed to write off nearly half the population as unreachable by Republicans. \r\n\u201cI think he was embarrassed,\u201d Woodson, the civil rights activist, said of Ryan. \u201cAnd it propelled him to deepen his own understanding of this.\u201d\r\nKemp\u2019s influence \r\nUnlike Romney, Ryan is no child of privilege. His dad died when he was 16, and he paid for college with a mix of Social Security survivors checks and maxed-out student loans, according to his brother, Tobin Ryan. During a semester in Washington, he went to work on Capitol Hill and found his way to Empower America, working directly for Kemp. \r\nIn the mid-1990s, crime and poverty were hot national issues. Kemp was a font of innovative ideas for reviving inner-city commerce, rebuilding public housing and overhauling the welfare system. He was pro-immigration, pro-equal opportunity and, above all, pro-tax cuts, which he viewed as government\u2019s primary tool for promoting growth. \r\nUnlike other Republicans, Kemp also frequently visited black and Hispanic voters and asked them directly for their votes.\r\nTwo days after Ryan was introduced as Romney\u2019s running mate, he pushed to do the same. Advisers recall Ryan in workout clothes in a Des Moines Marriott, telling campaign officials in Boston that he had two requests: First, to meet the staff in person. And second, to travel to urban areas and speak about poverty.\r\nNo one said no. But with Romney focused relentlessly on Obama\u2019s failure to improve the economy for middle-class Americans, the idea always seemed off-message. \u201cWe struggled to find the right timing to dovetail it into our messaging schedule,\u201d Romney strategist Ed Gillespie said via e-mail.\r\nRyan adviser Dan Senor said Ryan argued that \u201c47 million people on food stamps is an economic failure.\u201d But Ryan did not get clearance to deliver a speech on poverty, his sole policy address, until two weeks before the election. \r\nRyan had \u201cfrustration during the campaign for obvious reasons. His message, which was more than jobs and business, was secondary, subsidiary. So you didn\u2019t get the full Ryan,\u201d said Bennett, who vacationed with Ryan and his family in Colorado this summer. When the campaign was over, Ryan found himself \u201cwanting to say more about who he was and introducing that broader agenda.\u201d\r\nRyan had sought Woodson\u2019s help with his poverty speech. The two reconnected after the election and began traveling together in February \u2014 once a month, no reporters \u2014 to inner-city programs supported by Woodson\u2019s Center for Neighborhood Enterprise. In Milwaukee, Indianapolis and Denver, Woodson said, Ryan asked questions about \u201cthe agents of transformation and how this differs from the professional approach\u201d of government social workers.\r\nLike Woodson, the programs share a disdain for handouts and a focus on helping people address their own problems. In Southeast Washington, Ryan met Bishop Shirley Holloway, who gave up a comfortable career in the U.S. Postal Service to minister to drug addicts, ex-offenders, the homeless \u2014 people for whom government benefits can serve only to hasten their downfall, Holloway said. \r\nAt City of Hope, they are given an apartment and taught life skills and encouraged to confront their psychological wounds. They can stay as long as they\u2019re sober and working, often in a job Holloway has somehow created.\r\n\u201cPaul wants people to dream again,\u201d Holloway said of Ryan. \u201cYou don\u2019t dream when you\u2019ve got food stamps.\u201d\r\nTrips to Newark and Texas are slated for later this month. Woodson said Ryan has also asked him to gather community leaders for an event next year, and to help him compare the results of their work with the 78 means-tested programs that have cost the federal government $15 trillion since 1964. \r\nThe takeaway for Ryan, a Catholic, has been explicitly religious. \u201cYou cure poverty eye to eye, soul to soul,\u201d he said last week at the Heritage forum. \u201cSpiritual redemption: That\u2019s what saves people.\u201d\r\nHow to translate spiritual redemption into public policy? So far, Ryan\u2019s speeches have been light on specifics. \r\nScott Winship, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who has been advising Ryan\u2019s staff, said his task is tricky. Conservative anti-poverty prescriptions tend either to promote broad economic growth, which is nothing new for the GOP, or to place new controls on existing government programs \u2014 which, he said, \u201cmakes Republicans look like they\u2019re just punishing poor people.\u201d\r\nThe key, Winship said, will be coming up with incentives \u201cthat are consistent with conservative values about personal responsibility and smaller government.\u201d One idea: giving poor parents vouchers or tax credits to invest in their kids\u2019 educations.\r\n\u201cThere\u2019s definitely a feeling that conservatives need to get in this arena,\u201d Winship said. Otherwise, \u201cthe voices on the left are going to have the entire conversation to themselves.\u201d\r\nPaul Kane contributed to this report from Iowa. \r\nhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/paul-ryan-gops-budget-architect-sets-his-sights-on-fighting-poverty-and-winning-minds/2013/11/18/5c024888-4da8-11e3-9890-a1e0997fb0c0_story.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=362223"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8107968606054783, "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"}