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. He represented Wisconsin's 1st congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1999 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he was the party's vice presidential nominee in the 2012 presidential election, running alongside presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Ryan was born in Janesville, Wisconsin, and graduated from Miami University in 1992. He spent five years working in Washington, D.C., becoming a speechwriter and legislative director, then returned to Wisconsin in 1997 to work at his family's construction company. He was elected to Congress to represent Wisconsin's 1st congressional district the following year, replacing Mark Neumann, who had vacated the seat to run for U.S. Senate. Ryan went on to 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.

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. He was selected by Mitt Romney as the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2012, but the ticket ultimately lost to incumbents Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the presidential election.

Ryan was elected Speaker of the House after John Boehner's resignation in 2015. During his speakership, 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and Jobs Act of 2017 and the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act in 2018, which partially repealed the Dodd–Frank Act. 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.