45 Facts About Paul Ryan

1. Self-proclaimed deficit hawk, Paul Ryan was a major proponent of Social Security privatization in the mid-2000s.

2. Paul Ryan declined to run for re-election in the 2018 midterm elections.

3. Paul Ryan participated in several academic and social clubs including the Model United Nations.

4. Paul Ryan was a member of the College Republicans, and volunteered for the congressional campaign of John Boehner.

5. In 1995, Paul Ryan became the legislative director for then-US Congressman Sam Brownback of Kansas.

6. Paul Ryan was first elected to the House in 1998, winning the 1st District seat of Republican Mark Neumann, a two-term incumbent who had vacated his seat to make an unsuccessful bid for the US Senate.

7. Paul Ryan defeated Democratic challenger Jeffrey C Thomas in the 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006 elections.

8. In 2012, under Wisconsin election law, Paul Ryan was allowed to run concurrently for vice president and for Congress and was not allowed to remove his name from the Congressional ballot after being nominated for the vice presidency.

9. Paul Ryan was reelected with 55 percent of his district's vote and 44 percent of the vote in his hometown, Janesville.

10. Paul Ryan became the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee in 2007 and became chairman of the committee in 2011 after Republicans took control of the House.

11. Paul Ryan voted against the final report of the commission.

12. Paul Ryan released a statement that said, "While I am grateful for the encouragement I've received, I will not be a candidate.

13. Nevertheless, Paul Ryan continued to endorse Trump, believing that more Republican policies will be enacted under Donald Trump than presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

14. Paul Ryan freed down-ticket congress members to use their own judgment about Trump, saying "you all need to do what's best for you and your district.

15. Two months after the 2016 elections, Paul Ryan was re-elected Speaker of the House on January 3, 2017, the opening day of the 115th Congress.

16. Paul Ryan received 239 votes to House Democratic Leader Pelosi's 189 votes.

17. Paul Ryan urged Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Congressional oversight committees to "do their jobs so that we can get to the bottom of all of this.

18. Paul Ryan provided political cover for Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, who many characterized as a source of the dysfunction in the committee as it investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election.

19. When President Trump ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – which granted temporary stay for undocumented immigrants brought into the United States as minors – Paul Ryan said DACA recipients should "rest easy" because Congress would solve the problem for them, but Paul Ryan backed no bills to protect DACA recipients.

20. Paul Ryan said that legislation to protect Mueller's investigation was not "necessary".

21. In May 2018, Paul Ryan led the House in passing the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act, which partially repealed the Dodd-Frank Act.

22. In fiscal year 2008, Paul Ryan garnered $5.4 million in congressional earmarks, including $3.28 million for bus service in Wisconsin, $1.38 million for the Ice Age Trail, and $735,000 for the Janesville transit system.

23. In 2012, Paul Ryan supported a request for $3.8 million from the Department of Transportation for a new transit center in Janesville, which city officials received in July.

24. Paul Ryan was an active member of a task force established by Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle that tried unsuccessfully to persuade General Motors to keep its assembly plant in Janesville open.

25. Paul Ryan made personal contact with GM executives to try to convince them to save or retool the plant, offering GM hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded incentives.

26. The only public meetings Paul Ryan attended in his district required an admission fee of at least $15.

27. Paul Ryan maintained a mobile office to serve constituents in outlying areas.

28. Dan Balz of The Washington Post wrote that Paul Ryan was promoted as a candidate for vice president "by major elements of the conservative opinion makers, including The Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Weekly Standard and the editor of National Review".

29. Paul Ryan is the first individual from Wisconsin as well as the first member of Generation X to run on a major party's national ticket.

30. On October 11, 2012, Paul Ryan debated his Democratic counterpart, incumbent Vice President Joe Biden, in the only vice presidential debate of the 2012 election cycle.

31. Romney and Paul Ryan lost the 2012 presidential election, but Paul Ryan retained his seat in the House of Representatives.

32. In 2012, Paul Ryan voted against the Simpson-Bowles commission proposal to reduce the deficit, because the proposal raised taxes and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

33. Paul Ryan subscribed to supply-side economics and supported tax cuts including eliminating the capital gains tax, the corporate income tax, the estate tax, and the Alternative Minimum Tax.

34. In 2018 as House Speaker, Paul Ryan helped pass the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act that repealed large parts of Dodd-Frank.

35. Paul Ryan supported the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit and opposes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as "Obamacare.

36. In 2012, The New York Times said Paul Ryan was "his party's most forceful spokesman for cutting entitlement spending.

37. Paul Ryan opposed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which provides that the 180-day statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay lawsuit regarding pay discrimination resets with each new paycheck affected by that discriminatory action.

38. Paul Ryan is unsure, and believes climate scientists are unsure, of the impact of human activity on climate change.

39. Paul Ryan condemned Barack Obama's decision not to block a UN resolution criticizing Israeli settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories as "absolutely shameful".

40. At a 2005 Washington, DC, gathering celebrating the 100th anniversary of Ayn Rand's birth, Paul Ryan credited Rand with having inspired him to get involved in politics.

41. Paul Ryan required staffers and interns in his congressional office to read Rand and gave copies of her novel Atlas Shrugged as gifts to his staff for Christmas.

42. In 2009, Paul Ryan said, "What's unique about what's happening today in government, in the world, in America, is that it's as if we're living in an Ayn Rand novel right now.

43. In March 2019, Paul Ryan joined the board of directors of Fox Corporation, the owner of Fox News Channel and the Fox broadcast network.

44. In October 2019, Paul Ryan launched a non-profit called American Idea Foundation.

45. In October 2020, Paul Ryan joined the public relations and advisory company Teneo as a senior advisor.