66 Facts About Speaker Ryan

Paul Davis Ryan was born on January 29,1970 and is an American former politician who served as the 54th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from October 2015 to January 2019.

Speaker Ryan spent five years working for Congress in Washington, DC Speaker Ryan became a speechwriter and returned to Wisconsin in 1997 to work at his family's construction company.

Speaker Ryan was elected to Congress to represent the following year, replacing a Republican Congressman who left and ran for US Senate.

Speaker Ryan 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.

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

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

Paul Davis Speaker Ryan was born on January 29,1970, in Janesville, Wisconsin, the youngest of four children of Elizabeth "Betty" Ann, who later became an interior designer, and Paul Murray Speaker Ryan, a lawyer.

Speaker Ryan's father was of Irish ancestry and his mother of German and English descent.

In 2018, while filming a segment for the PBS series Finding Your Roots, Speaker Ryan learned that his DNA results included 3 percent Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.

Speaker Ryan was on his high school's ski, track, and varsity soccer teams and played basketball in a Catholic recreational league.

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

Speaker Ryan has a bachelor's degree in economics and political science from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he became interested in the writings of Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman.

Speaker Ryan often visited the office of libertarian professor Richard Hart to discuss the theories of these economists and of Ayn Rand.

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

Speaker Ryan was a member of the Delta Tau Delta social fraternity.

Betty Speaker Ryan reportedly urged her son to accept a congressional position as a legislative aide in Senator Kasten's office, which he did after graduating in 1992.

Speaker Ryan later worked as a speechwriter for Kemp, the Republican vice presidential candidate in the 1996 United States presidential election.

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

Speaker 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.

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

In 2012, under Wisconsin election law, Speaker 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.

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

Speaker 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.

In 2010, Speaker Ryan was a member of the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which was tasked with developing a plan to reduce the federal deficit.

In 2012, Speaker Ryan accused the nation's top military leaders of using "smoke and mirrors" to remain under budget limits passed by Congress.

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Speaker Ryan later said that he misspoke on the issue and called General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to apologize for his comments.

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

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

On February 7,2017, Speaker Ryan told reporters a replacement for the Affordable Care Act would be introduced "this year" amid speculation Donald Trump would not act toward doing so until the following year.

In May 2017, Speaker Ryan said Congress' goal was "calendared 2017 for tax reform" and reported progress was being made in doing so.

In June 2017, Speaker Ryan expressed support for strong sanctions on Russia in response to Russian interference in the 2016 elections and its annexation of the Crimea, saying that Russia's actions were "unacceptable".

Speaker 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.

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

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

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

Speaker 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.

Speaker 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.

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

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

Dan Balz of The Washington Post wrote that Speaker 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".

Speaker 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.

Speaker Ryan formally accepted his nomination at the 2012 Republican National Convention on August 29,2012.

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

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

In 2012, Speaker 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.

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Speaker 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.

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

Speaker 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.

In 2012, Speaker Ryan supported civil unions and opposed same-sex marriage.

Speaker Ryan supported school vouchers, and supported the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 and its repeal the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015.

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

Speaker Ryan supported tax incentives for the petroleum industry and opposed them for renewable energy.

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

Speaker Ryan supported President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Speaker Ryan supported US involvement in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen and used his power to block a House vote on the war in Yemen.

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

Speaker 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.

Speaker Ryan called the reports of his adherence to Rand's views an "urban legend" and stated that he was instead deeply influenced by his Catholic faith and by Thomas Aquinas.

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

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

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

In December 2000, Speaker Ryan married Janna Christine Little who is a tax attorney.

Janna Speaker Ryan is a graduate of Wellesley College and George Washington University Law School as well as a native of Madill, Oklahoma.

Speaker Ryan is a member of St John Vianney Catholic Church in Janesville.

Speaker Ryan is a granddaughter of Reuel Little, who helped found the American Party to support the 1968 presidential campaign of George Wallace.

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Speaker Ryan has always been a fitness enthusiast and was a personal trainer after graduating from college.