Free Republic

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) promised reporters this week that his committee would not pass any new taxes – oh, sorry, “user fees” – on gasoline. Speaking to reporters at the GOP retreat in Hershey, Pennsylvania on Thursday, Ryan flatly asserted that his committee “won’t pass a gas tax.” He even had the gall to call it a “tax,” which is perhaps the best indication of his sincerity. The former Republican vice presidential nominee recently ruled out a 2016 White House bid and will instead pursue broad tax code reform as the chairman of...

From the first day of 2011, Mitt Romney was the favorite to win the 2012 Republican presidential primary campaign. No one else was even close. The 2016 outlook could not be more different. Offered the choice to bet on one single candidate to win the nomination versus the rest of the field, the choice would have to be "the field." For the first time in years, there is no one next in line. And without a former vice president or powerhouse former candidate looking likely to run, Republicans are shaping up to spend the next year and a half fighting...

WATERTOWN, N.Y.— Elise Stefanik, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, has never held elected office, but her résumé looks more like that of a Beltway insider than a political newcomer. By the time she won her seat representing a swath of upstate New York in the November election, she had served as a domestic policy aide for former President George W. Bush , a policy director for former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty ’s 2012 presidential campaign and head of debate preparation for vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan .

In my last column I assessed the Republican governors and former governors who may run for president in 2016. Now I turn to the legislators and the rest of the field. Other prospective Republican presidential candidates for 2016 include four young national legislators who will dominate the party in the first quarter of the 21st century. Two of the national legislators, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, have a surprising amount in common: Both have Cuban backgrounds, both arose from the tea party boom of 2009 and ’10, and both represent powerful states in the Electoral...

In a new poll of likely Republican primary voters nationwide by Zogby Analytics, 2012 GOP nominee Romney leads the pack with 14%, followed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush (12%), Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (10%), New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (8%), former Arkansas Governor and now Fox News Host Mike Huckabee (7%), Florida Senator Marco Rubio (7%), Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (5%), Rep. and former Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan (4%), Texas Governor Rick Perry (4%), Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (3%), Texas Senator Ted Cruz (3%), South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (2%), former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (1%), and both...

Last week a small and seemingly innocuous piece in The Times caught my eye. The short panel referred to the fact that Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's right hand man and the Republican Party nominee for Vice President of the United States, had just spent $100 on camouflage hunting clothes for his daughter, Liza, 10, to go with the rifle he bought her last Christmas. Aghast with what I had just read I blogged about it, commenting that buying a 10 year old a rifle for Christmas was insane, and anywhere in the world that it wasn't considered to be must...

On Republicans working with Obama to pass a $1.1 trillion Omnibus spending bill written by and for the Chamber of Amnesty… I don’t know how you go into 2016…and you say: ‘Okay, I want you to support the GOP because…we didn’t stop immigration-amnesty, we’re gonna bring in a lot more guest workers, and we think it’s good to do these big omnibus bills…oh, and by the way, we’re probably gonna fight a couple more wars. Vote for us.’ … What position would you rather be in? Warren’s position or, like, Paul Ryan– Mister Budget Hawk? Oh boy, that Paul Ryan...

Like two predatory animals circling each other, Republicans and Democrats are trying to sort out the meaning of last month's election and plan strategies for the remaining days of the current Congress and the new one in which Republicans will hold majorities in both houses. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), soon to be chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, spoke with me about the election and his party's strategy going forward. "I think (voters) want to see government respect taxpayers again and respect (government's) limits. And they don't want to see an executive go unchecked ... people want...

It’s “the single most important committee in Congress,” one former Representative tells WTMJ in Milwaukee, with its fingers in practically everything the federal government does. Tax reform? Ways and Means. Health care? Social Security? Ways and Means. And now the most visionary of the Republican fiscal reformers will chair the panel as all of these issues come to a head in the final two years of the Obama administration: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Ryan already is taking aim in all of these areas in his statement yesterday after winning the post in the House Republican leadership discussions:...

It’s hard to overstate how irresponsible President Obama would be to go forward, as he almost surely will, with his sweeping executive order on amnesty. Ross Douthat of the New York Times has written a fine column on why doing so would be, in his words, a “disgrace.” What the president is on the verge of doing would do tremendous, long-term damage to our political culture and our constitutional order. It would set a dangerous precedent. And it would be an act of extraordinary selfishness. By now none of this should surprise us. Yet on some level it’s hard to...

The “elephant in the room,” now that Scott Walker has won a remarkable third election as governor of Wisconsin in only four years, is the presidential election in 2016. Well before the 2014 midterms, speculation was rife about Walker’s possible presidential ambitions, and his several trips to neighboring Iowa did nothing to quell it. It is widely assumed that Walker’s possible presidential ambitions are a major reason the national Democratic Party and its various third-party interest groups expended enormous resources in the unsuccessful attempts to defeat him. There are many reasons for the Democrats to be terrified of a possible...

In a cramped banquet room on the top floor of Janesville's historic Armory building, a contender for Wisconsin's state Senate tells an old joke—the one about politicians and diapers needing to be changed often, and for the same reason. "These politicians start to stagnate after awhile," the candidate, a businessman named Brian Fitzgerald, tells the crowd of local Republicans. Just then, a voice booms from the back. "Brian! I'm right here!" The room erupts in laughter. It's Paul Ryan. To the dozens gathered, Ryan is a hometown hero. He's the boy wonder who emerged from Janesville, population 63,820, to become...

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) predicts that there will be enough support for immigration reform in a GOP-led Congress. According to the Associated Press, "Ryan said that as long as Obama doesn't try an executive order in November or December and works with Congress," immigration legislation can be enacted.

MADISON, WI (AP) — Republican Gov. Scott Walker is leading Democrat Mary Burke in the last Marquette University Law School poll released before Tuesday’s election. The poll released Wednesday showed Walker with 50 percent support, compared with 43 percent for Burke. The poll had a margin of error of 3 percentage points. Walker and Burke were tied with 47 percent support in the previous poll released two weeks ago. The one before that, on Oct. 1, showed Walker with a narrow 5-point lead. The latest poll of 1,164 likely voters was done between Oct. 23 and Sunday. Walker was campaigning...

If you don't know what the Dodd-Frank Act is, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told an audience last weekend, "it's Obamacare for banks." Ryan, outgoing chairman of the House Budget Committee, was echoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who's been using that expression since at least April (and he used it again Wednesday night). Expect to hear the expression more, particularly once a new, probably-Republican-led Senate takes over on Capitol Hill in January. Dodd-Frank, a set of financial regulations passed in the wake of the financial crisis, has been cited by financial reporters, liberal publications, and (most importantly) Republican senators...

House Republican appropriators say they will follow the two-year budget deal reached after the 2013 government shutdown regardless of who wins control of the Senate in November’s elections. Winning the Senate would give the GOP more leverage in spending fights with the administration, but GOP lawmakers have signaled they don't want to open a new bruising war over spending by rolling back the 2013 budget deal, in which Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) agreed to spending caps for the government for the 2014 and 2015 fiscal years. On the cusp of an election that could deliver...

Politico’s David Nather cast the most mentioned Republican presidential contenders as un-presidential on Friday in a story headlined “GOP 2016ers on Ebola: Panic.” Only Rick Perry was the responsible one, he implied: For once, President Barack Obama and Texas Gov. Rick Perry are on the same page. At separate briefings on the Ebola crisis, Obama administration officials and Perry have delivered the same message: Don’t panic — the health authorities know what they’re doing. But for other Republicans — and conservative media outlets — it’s time for panic. The likely 2016 Republican presidential candidates — except for Perry — are...

McClatchy-Marist Poll. Sept. 24-29, 2014. N=376 registered voters nationwide who are Republicans or lean Republican. Question: "If the 2016 Republican presidential primary or caucus in your state were held today, whom would you support if the candidates are [see below]?" Jeb Bush-15% Rand Paul-13% Paul Ryan-13% Chris Christie-12% Rick Perry-7% Marco Rubio-6% Ted Cruz-4% Bobby Jindal-4% Rick Santorum-3% Scott Walker-3% Unsure-21%

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) pressed the economic case for overhauling the nation’s immigration system on Wednesday, saying that reform is inevitable and necessary to boost growth in the United States.Ryan’s fellow House Republicans have largely put the kibosh on moving forward with immigration reform this year, but some key GOP lawmakers are still lobbying their colleagues publicly and privately to tackle immigration. The 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee is among figures who have urged the GOP to embrace an overhaul.“To me, it’s not a question of ‘if’ we fix our broken immigration laws,” Ryan said Wednesday at a breakfast hosted...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)There are 65 prominent people who might run for president in 2016. The Democratic and Republican fields contrast sharply. Hillary Clinton is the clear front-runner, while there is no front-runner on the Republican side. Twenty-three Democrats have been mentioned as a candidate or are eyeing a bid, according to an analysis by The Hill. The GOP side has 42. Most of the people on this list won’t run, and some have adamantly claimed that they’re not interested. But many politicians have changed their minds on seeking the White House. Before mounting his 2008 bid, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said he...