Paul Ryan

Paul Davis Ryan (born January 29, 1970) is an American former politician who served as the 54th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he was the vice presidential nominee in the 2012 election running alongside Mitt Romney, but lost to incumbent president Barack Obama and then-vice president Joe Biden. Ryan is a native of Janesville, Wisconsin and graduated from Miami University in 1992. He spent five years working for Congress in Washington, D.C. He became a speechwriter and returned to Wisconsin in 1997 to work at his family's construction company. He was elected to Congress to represent the following year, replacing a Republican Congressman who left and ran for U.S. Senate. Ryan would represent the district for 20 years. He chaired the House Budget Committee from 2011 to 2015 and briefly chaired the House Ways and Means Committee in 2015 prior to being elected Speaker of the House in October 2015 following John Boehner's retirement. A self-proclaimed deficit hawk, Ryan was a major proponent of Social Security privatization in the mid-2000s. During the 2010s, two proposals heavily influenced by Ryan—"The Path to Prosperity" and "A Better Way"—became part of the national dialogue advocating for the privatization of Medicare, the conversion of Medicaid into a block grant program, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and significant federal tax cuts. As Speaker he played a key role in the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act in 2018, which partially repealed the Dodd-Frank Act. His other major piece of legislation, the American Health Care Act of 2017, passed the House but failed in the Senate by one vote. Ryan declined to run for re-election in the 2018 midterm elections. With the Democratic Party taking control of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi succeeded Ryan as Speaker of the House.