ELECTION 2010
Ryan's on the map, and taking heat
Tom Lynn
U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposals for a fiscal overhaul have earned him conservative praise but attacks from Democrats, who say his plan favors the wealthy.
A GOP hero, the representative has earned rivals' ire for fiscal proposals
By Craig Gilbert of the Journal Sentinel
Sept. 9, 2010 |(168) COMMENTS
Related Coverage
Ryan's on the map, and taking heat
Lost in Ryan's Roadmap? Get some direction
As a wholesale rethinking of Social Security, Medicare and federal taxes, Paul Ryan's Roadmap has put the Janesville Republican on the political map.
It has won him adulation from conservatives for his long-term assault on federal spending.
It has won him acclaim in the media for serving up richly detailed and politically risky ideas that make many in his own party queasy.
And now it's landing him in the cross-hairs of the midterm elections, as Democrats launch attack ads and fund-raising appeals accusing the GOP of wanting to "privatize" Social Security and "end Medicare as we know it."
"The Roadmap is a dead end," says Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which opened its national fall TV blitz last week with an ad accusing a GOP candidate in northern Wisconsin - Sean Duffy - of wanting to privatize Social Security just because he praised Ryan's Roadmap.
Ryan calls such attacks "juvenile."
"They're just trying to scare the heck out of Grandpa and Grandma," says Ryan, the 1st District congressman who will become budget chairman if his party retakes the House.
It's fair to say that some attacks on the Roadmap - officially called A Roadmap for America's Future - have been overblown.
It's also fair to say that Ryan's plan is controversial for a reason.
"These are an astounding group of major changes in existing policies," says Stan Collender, former Democratic House and Senate budget staffer and author of "The Guide to the Federal Budget."
Ryan's plan is audacious in at least two ways. One is that it tries to tackle with great specificity the government's long-term debt and deficits, a problem that intimidates both parties because it requires doing very painful things, such as raising taxes or cutting Medicare.
In that sense, the Roadmap has taken on symbolic significance - and won a great deal of flattering attention - as a call-to-arms about the nation's finances.
The other reason it's audacious involves the particular solutions that Ryan is offering: deeply conservative remedies that provoke genuine ideological division.
Among them:
• A total makeover of Medicare for people now under the age of 55, replacing a guaranteed benefit with a federal voucher that individuals would use to help purchase private coverage.
• The option of personal investment accounts for younger Americans in place of the traditional Social Security system.
• Reductions in traditional Social Security benefits for many future recipients.
• Tax changes whose direct benefits go overwhelmingly to wealthier Americans, including no taxes on investment income and capital gains and the replacement of the corporate income tax with a tax on consumption.
"The plan identifies all the 'third rails' of politics and makes a beeline for them. It massacres sacred cows in slaughterhouse fashion. The audacity is remarkable," observed a USA Today editorial Monday.
"Many of his proposals are pretty extreme, or certainly more extreme than anything Congress under Democratic or Republican control has considered before," says Collender, a well-known and widely quoted budget expert. "Under those circumstances he should expect, anticipate and be prepared for a tidal wave of criticism on every aspect of it."
Ryan says he is happy to have that debate, but simply wants it to be an "adult conversation" in which his proposals aren't caricatured or demonized. He calls some criticism ad hominem, citing the anti-Roadmap column written by economist Paul Krugman in the New York Times last month that deemed the Roadmap a "fraud." He describes other critiques as legitimate disagreements, like former Obama budget director Peter Orszag's argument that the Roadmap's Medicare vouchers would leave future seniors falling further and further behind the growing cost of health care.
Ryan's defenders include some deficit hawks who don't agree with all his policies but cheer him on for making a run at the country's looming fiscal problem. Even President Obama called the Roadmap a serious proposal.
"Paul Ryan's plan is a very conservative approach to fiscal reform. It would be great if somebody came out and matched it with a very liberal approach, and someone else matched it with a centrist approach, and we could assess the merits and debate the tradeoffs," says Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "Instead, the one courageous person is getting shot at from all sides."
Coming out swinging
The Roadmap's critics make no apologies. In fact, they complain that until recently the actual content of Ryan's plan had been overlooked amid the applause for simply having a plan.
"I still find it a bit surprising that this plan, which has what I would think are highly unattractive elements, is getting so much favorable attention," says Paul Van de Water, analyst with the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
Struggling to retain their congressional majorities, Democrats have opened up new lines of attack this fall against Republicans on Social Security and Medicare, many of them based on the Roadmap.
The Democratic ad accusing Ashland Republican Sean Duffy of wanting to privatize Social Security was based on comments Duffy made about the Roadmap. Duffy calls the Roadmap "a good starting point" but says he opposes privatizing Social Security.
The Roadmap has popped up in races outside Wisconsin, as well. Van Hollen featured it prominently in a recent D.C. news conference, saying the Roadmap would "partially privatize Social Security and end Medicare as we know it."
But as much as Democrats would like to run against the Roadmap, most Republicans have tried to keep their distance. The legislative form of the Roadmap has only 13 GOP sponsors. Party leaders in the House (John Boehner) and Senate (Mitch McConnell) have been treading carefully, lauding Ryan but declining to endorse the Roadmap's components.
Asked at the Brookings Institution earlier this year why more conservatives in office weren't getting behind his plan, Ryan answered: "They're talking to their pollsters and their pollsters are saying, 'Stay away from this. We're going to win an election.' "
Some conservatives complain of GOP timidity.
"I am disappointed that more Republicans don't have their own Roadmap," says Doug Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and economic adviser to Republican John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.
"I didn't write this with the expectation that my party would embrace it," Ryan told the Journal Sentinel editorial board Wednesday. "It's not my job to represent the party."
Of course, Ryan is no minor figure in the GOP these days. He's serving on the president's deficit commission. He has written a new book with two other leading House Republicans, dubbing themselves the "Young Guns." The Beltway newspaper and website "Politico" recently described him as the "trendy cult hero of the modern GOP."
"He would be the chairman of the budget committee if the Republicans take control of Congress. That would put him in a pivotal position," warns Van Hollen.
"My point was trying to get this debate started," Ryan said. "Here's my idea. Come up with yours."
August 2, 2010
A Young Republican With a Sweeping Agenda
By MONICA DAVEY
ELKHORN, Wis. — Still early on a recent weekday morning, the mostly elderly crowd that half-filled a hall in this small town looked like it might be thinking about another cup of coffee. But Representative Paul D. Ryan, the rangy Republican who represents this southeastern Wisconsin district, was in full PowerPoint roll, gesturing and barking out, in staccato tones, why the nation must make major changes to Social Security and Medicare.
“The question is, Could this happen here?” Mr. Ryan said, as an image of a burning street from the recent riots in Greece flashed on a screen behind him.
“Do you want this welfare state, which puts us down this tipping point, advances this culture of dependency, moves us away from the America idea toward more of a Western European social democracy welfare state? Do you want that which invites a debt crisis? Or the alternative party is offering you an opportunity society on top of a safety net where we reclaim these ideals and principles that founded this country. That’s what we owe you. And if we get back in office and we shrink from that challenge, shame on us.”
In this highly charged election season with both houses of Congress at stake, not a lot of politicians are lining up publicly behind Mr. Ryan. He is, nonetheless, suddenly a rising star in some corners. And like many other politicians whose ideas were once considered extreme, only to later be mainstream — like Ronald Reagan — Mr. Ryan is seen as on the leading edge of something.
Why? His “Roadmap for America’s Future,” an elaborate (critics say drastic) plan that aims to erase the federal debt by 2063, simplify the tax code and significantly alter (his critics say eviscerate) Medicare and Social Security. When asked to handicap the 2012 Republican presidential field, Sarah Palin called Mr. Ryan “sharp.” Newt Gingrich dubbed him “extraordinarily formidable.” And, in a column, George Will imagined him as vice president to a President Mitch Daniels (now the Republican governor of Indiana).
Mr. Ryan, 40 and the ranking Republican on the House budget committee, has been in Congress 12 years, but it may have been President Obama who gave him and his Roadmap the broadest attention yet. This year, Mr. Obama alluded to the plan as a “serious proposal,” though the White House promptly made it clear that it had problems with its details.
Mr. Ryan’s Roadmap served as an answer to those who have accused Republicans of saying no, while having no ideas of their own. It has taken fierce criticism from Democrats, who seem content to have something to hate, but it is drawing a far more awkward, unwanted dividing line for Republicans over the sensitive politics of entitlement programs.
Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, the minority leader, has praised Mr. Ryan but said the Roadmap would not be a part of the Republican agenda this fall.
“There are parts of it that are well done,” Mr. Boehner told reporters last month. “Other parts I have some doubts about, in terms of how good the policy is.”
In fact, only 13 House Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors, and Republican leaders, hoping for gains in the fall and, ultimately, in 2012, seem concerned at the possibility that the Roadmap may eventually become something candidates will be forced to take a position on. After all, what candidate wants to talk about major changes to Medicare and Social Security?
Even some of Mr. Ryan’s loudest supporters are reluctant to support the Roadmap top to bottom. Mr. Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, lavished praise on Mr. Ryan’s intellect and discipline, but did not go so far as to endorse the Roadmap.
“I think it’s a very good starting point,” Mr. Gingrich said. “It’s not a yes-no. When you undertake change on that scale, you have to have a national conversation.”
Fit from years of an intense exercise program called P90X and with hair as thick as Rod R. Blagojevich’s (and cut in a more contemporary fashion), Mr. Ryan has become a regular on the cable news circuit, and a book about conservative politics that he co-wrote — “Young Guns” — will include his picture on the cover when it comes out this fall.
But Mr. Ryan is still a wonk. He studied economics in college, once intended to seek an advanced degree from the University of Chicago’s school of economics, and meant to become an economist. Somewhere between stints working for Jack Kemp, a mentor, and Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, he meandered into public policy. The inner nerd seeps through: he often sleeps on a cot in the office, says he has “every 15-minute interval” until September scheduled, and writes up these PowerPoints himself (“I really like PowerPoint”).
Mr. Ryan favors small government and gun rights and opposes abortion. Mr. Obama, he says, is a pleasant person — not “nefarious or evil” — but extremely liberal, and “accelerating our path to cradle-to-grave welfare programs.”
The Roadmap, which cuts spending decades into the future, is packed with detail, though not everyone agrees what it would yield. People could choose a simplified, two-rate tax system. Corporate income tax would be replaced with a business consumption tax.
For people now younger than 55, Medicare would become a voucher program in which they would buy private insurance, and Social Security would allow people to create individual investment accounts paid for with payroll taxes. With both entitlement programs, the age eligibility requirements would gradually go up. Advocates praise the plan as a realistic way to take on the nation’s out-of-control debt and prevent the utter collapse of a Medicare and Social Security program, while critics say it guts those programs and would leave old, vulnerable people fending for themselves. Most political consultants advise steering clear of the whole conversation: messing with Social Security and Medicare, they calculate, never wins votes — something Wisconsin Democrats have instantly homed in on.
“We will be talking about his oddball plan to end Medicare and privatize Social Security,” Graeme Zielinski, a spokesman for the state Democratic Party, said. “Republicans usually do a tap dance around the reality of the Republican fantasy of ending Social Security and Medicare. One thing you can say for him: he really wants to make it the reality.”
Mr. Zielinski also questioned Mr. Ryan’s professed passion about the deficit; where, he asked, was Mr. Ryan’s concern during the Bush administration? (Mr. Ryan’s staff counters that he has talked about these concerns and voted against several Republican spending bills over the years.)
For now, Mr. Ryan appears politically safe. His campaign has raised $2.1 million, more than in any of his six prior races.
His family has lived in these parts since 1851, and it shows. He calls the waitress at the hamburger joint by name. Older residents stop to fuss over whether he is eating enough.
Democrats, meanwhile, scrambled to find an opponent, eventually signing up John Heckenlively, who has never won office but said he was moved by the thought, “What, nobody is going to run?”
That is not to say that Democrats never win this district, a conglomeration of farm towns, industrial cities like Janesville and south Milwaukee suburbs. Mr. Obama won here.
Mr. Ryan has been talking about the ideas in the Roadmap since 2008, when he published an earlier version. During several town-hall-style meetings on a recent day, he received a few questions about Social Security and Medicare, but no pointed complaints. His plan, he tells one group, is not to end anything.
“If we did that, my mom would kill me,” Mr. Ryan said, adding that his mother, Betty, receives Social Security.
Later, Mr. Ryan said, “I don’t think these things are third rails anymore. People are ready for this.”
Mr. Ryan and his allies — who admit that the Roadmap is unlikely to get a real hearing in Congress soon — say Republican colleagues who have yet to support the idea are probably following the admonitions of political consultants. But Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California, who signed on to the Roadmap months ago, says candidates in 2012 will be forced to take a stand — up or down — on its ideas.
“The deficit isn’t going away, the entitlements aren’t getting better, and it’s tough times out there,” Mr. Nunes said. “The presidential candidates are going to have a problem with this.”
Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting from Washington.
Ryan's on the map, and taking heat
Tom Lynn
U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposals for a fiscal overhaul have earned him conservative praise but attacks from Democrats, who say his plan favors the wealthy.
A GOP hero, the representative has earned rivals' ire for fiscal proposals
By Craig Gilbert of the Journal Sentinel
Sept. 9, 2010 |(168) COMMENTS
Related Coverage
Ryan's on the map, and taking heat
Lost in Ryan's Roadmap? Get some direction
As a wholesale rethinking of Social Security, Medicare and federal taxes, Paul Ryan's Roadmap has put the Janesville Republican on the political map.
It has won him adulation from conservatives for his long-term assault on federal spending.
It has won him acclaim in the media for serving up richly detailed and politically risky ideas that make many in his own party queasy.
And now it's landing him in the cross-hairs of the midterm elections, as Democrats launch attack ads and fund-raising appeals accusing the GOP of wanting to "privatize" Social Security and "end Medicare as we know it."
"The Roadmap is a dead end," says Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which opened its national fall TV blitz last week with an ad accusing a GOP candidate in northern Wisconsin - Sean Duffy - of wanting to privatize Social Security just because he praised Ryan's Roadmap.
Ryan calls such attacks "juvenile."
"They're just trying to scare the heck out of Grandpa and Grandma," says Ryan, the 1st District congressman who will become budget chairman if his party retakes the House.
It's fair to say that some attacks on the Roadmap - officially called A Roadmap for America's Future - have been overblown.
It's also fair to say that Ryan's plan is controversial for a reason.
"These are an astounding group of major changes in existing policies," says Stan Collender, former Democratic House and Senate budget staffer and author of "The Guide to the Federal Budget."
Ryan's plan is audacious in at least two ways. One is that it tries to tackle with great specificity the government's long-term debt and deficits, a problem that intimidates both parties because it requires doing very painful things, such as raising taxes or cutting Medicare.
In that sense, the Roadmap has taken on symbolic significance - and won a great deal of flattering attention - as a call-to-arms about the nation's finances.
The other reason it's audacious involves the particular solutions that Ryan is offering: deeply conservative remedies that provoke genuine ideological division.
Among them:
• A total makeover of Medicare for people now under the age of 55, replacing a guaranteed benefit with a federal voucher that individuals would use to help purchase private coverage.
• The option of personal investment accounts for younger Americans in place of the traditional Social Security system.
• Reductions in traditional Social Security benefits for many future recipients.
• Tax changes whose direct benefits go overwhelmingly to wealthier Americans, including no taxes on investment income and capital gains and the replacement of the corporate income tax with a tax on consumption.
"The plan identifies all the 'third rails' of politics and makes a beeline for them. It massacres sacred cows in slaughterhouse fashion. The audacity is remarkable," observed a USA Today editorial Monday.
"Many of his proposals are pretty extreme, or certainly more extreme than anything Congress under Democratic or Republican control has considered before," says Collender, a well-known and widely quoted budget expert. "Under those circumstances he should expect, anticipate and be prepared for a tidal wave of criticism on every aspect of it."
Ryan says he is happy to have that debate, but simply wants it to be an "adult conversation" in which his proposals aren't caricatured or demonized. He calls some criticism ad hominem, citing the anti-Roadmap column written by economist Paul Krugman in the New York Times last month that deemed the Roadmap a "fraud." He describes other critiques as legitimate disagreements, like former Obama budget director Peter Orszag's argument that the Roadmap's Medicare vouchers would leave future seniors falling further and further behind the growing cost of health care.
Ryan's defenders include some deficit hawks who don't agree with all his policies but cheer him on for making a run at the country's looming fiscal problem. Even President Obama called the Roadmap a serious proposal.
"Paul Ryan's plan is a very conservative approach to fiscal reform. It would be great if somebody came out and matched it with a very liberal approach, and someone else matched it with a centrist approach, and we could assess the merits and debate the tradeoffs," says Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "Instead, the one courageous person is getting shot at from all sides."
Coming out swinging
The Roadmap's critics make no apologies. In fact, they complain that until recently the actual content of Ryan's plan had been overlooked amid the applause for simply having a plan.
"I still find it a bit surprising that this plan, which has what I would think are highly unattractive elements, is getting so much favorable attention," says Paul Van de Water, analyst with the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
Struggling to retain their congressional majorities, Democrats have opened up new lines of attack this fall against Republicans on Social Security and Medicare, many of them based on the Roadmap.
The Democratic ad accusing Ashland Republican Sean Duffy of wanting to privatize Social Security was based on comments Duffy made about the Roadmap. Duffy calls the Roadmap "a good starting point" but says he opposes privatizing Social Security.
The Roadmap has popped up in races outside Wisconsin, as well. Van Hollen featured it prominently in a recent D.C. news conference, saying the Roadmap would "partially privatize Social Security and end Medicare as we know it."
But as much as Democrats would like to run against the Roadmap, most Republicans have tried to keep their distance. The legislative form of the Roadmap has only 13 GOP sponsors. Party leaders in the House (John Boehner) and Senate (Mitch McConnell) have been treading carefully, lauding Ryan but declining to endorse the Roadmap's components.
Asked at the Brookings Institution earlier this year why more conservatives in office weren't getting behind his plan, Ryan answered: "They're talking to their pollsters and their pollsters are saying, 'Stay away from this. We're going to win an election.' "
Some conservatives complain of GOP timidity.
"I am disappointed that more Republicans don't have their own Roadmap," says Doug Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and economic adviser to Republican John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.
"I didn't write this with the expectation that my party would embrace it," Ryan told the Journal Sentinel editorial board Wednesday. "It's not my job to represent the party."
Of course, Ryan is no minor figure in the GOP these days. He's serving on the president's deficit commission. He has written a new book with two other leading House Republicans, dubbing themselves the "Young Guns." The Beltway newspaper and website "Politico" recently described him as the "trendy cult hero of the modern GOP."
"He would be the chairman of the budget committee if the Republicans take control of Congress. That would put him in a pivotal position," warns Van Hollen.
"My point was trying to get this debate started," Ryan said. "Here's my idea. Come up with yours."
August 2, 2010
A Young Republican With a Sweeping Agenda
By MONICA DAVEY
ELKHORN, Wis. — Still early on a recent weekday morning, the mostly elderly crowd that half-filled a hall in this small town looked like it might be thinking about another cup of coffee. But Representative Paul D. Ryan, the rangy Republican who represents this southeastern Wisconsin district, was in full PowerPoint roll, gesturing and barking out, in staccato tones, why the nation must make major changes to Social Security and Medicare.
“The question is, Could this happen here?” Mr. Ryan said, as an image of a burning street from the recent riots in Greece flashed on a screen behind him.
“Do you want this welfare state, which puts us down this tipping point, advances this culture of dependency, moves us away from the America idea toward more of a Western European social democracy welfare state? Do you want that which invites a debt crisis? Or the alternative party is offering you an opportunity society on top of a safety net where we reclaim these ideals and principles that founded this country. That’s what we owe you. And if we get back in office and we shrink from that challenge, shame on us.”
In this highly charged election season with both houses of Congress at stake, not a lot of politicians are lining up publicly behind Mr. Ryan. He is, nonetheless, suddenly a rising star in some corners. And like many other politicians whose ideas were once considered extreme, only to later be mainstream — like Ronald Reagan — Mr. Ryan is seen as on the leading edge of something.
Why? His “Roadmap for America’s Future,” an elaborate (critics say drastic) plan that aims to erase the federal debt by 2063, simplify the tax code and significantly alter (his critics say eviscerate) Medicare and Social Security. When asked to handicap the 2012 Republican presidential field, Sarah Palin called Mr. Ryan “sharp.” Newt Gingrich dubbed him “extraordinarily formidable.” And, in a column, George Will imagined him as vice president to a President Mitch Daniels (now the Republican governor of Indiana).
Mr. Ryan, 40 and the ranking Republican on the House budget committee, has been in Congress 12 years, but it may have been President Obama who gave him and his Roadmap the broadest attention yet. This year, Mr. Obama alluded to the plan as a “serious proposal,” though the White House promptly made it clear that it had problems with its details.
Mr. Ryan’s Roadmap served as an answer to those who have accused Republicans of saying no, while having no ideas of their own. It has taken fierce criticism from Democrats, who seem content to have something to hate, but it is drawing a far more awkward, unwanted dividing line for Republicans over the sensitive politics of entitlement programs.
Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, the minority leader, has praised Mr. Ryan but said the Roadmap would not be a part of the Republican agenda this fall.
“There are parts of it that are well done,” Mr. Boehner told reporters last month. “Other parts I have some doubts about, in terms of how good the policy is.”
In fact, only 13 House Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors, and Republican leaders, hoping for gains in the fall and, ultimately, in 2012, seem concerned at the possibility that the Roadmap may eventually become something candidates will be forced to take a position on. After all, what candidate wants to talk about major changes to Medicare and Social Security?
Even some of Mr. Ryan’s loudest supporters are reluctant to support the Roadmap top to bottom. Mr. Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, lavished praise on Mr. Ryan’s intellect and discipline, but did not go so far as to endorse the Roadmap.
“I think it’s a very good starting point,” Mr. Gingrich said. “It’s not a yes-no. When you undertake change on that scale, you have to have a national conversation.”
Fit from years of an intense exercise program called P90X and with hair as thick as Rod R. Blagojevich’s (and cut in a more contemporary fashion), Mr. Ryan has become a regular on the cable news circuit, and a book about conservative politics that he co-wrote — “Young Guns” — will include his picture on the cover when it comes out this fall.
But Mr. Ryan is still a wonk. He studied economics in college, once intended to seek an advanced degree from the University of Chicago’s school of economics, and meant to become an economist. Somewhere between stints working for Jack Kemp, a mentor, and Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, he meandered into public policy. The inner nerd seeps through: he often sleeps on a cot in the office, says he has “every 15-minute interval” until September scheduled, and writes up these PowerPoints himself (“I really like PowerPoint”).
Mr. Ryan favors small government and gun rights and opposes abortion. Mr. Obama, he says, is a pleasant person — not “nefarious or evil” — but extremely liberal, and “accelerating our path to cradle-to-grave welfare programs.”
The Roadmap, which cuts spending decades into the future, is packed with detail, though not everyone agrees what it would yield. People could choose a simplified, two-rate tax system. Corporate income tax would be replaced with a business consumption tax.
For people now younger than 55, Medicare would become a voucher program in which they would buy private insurance, and Social Security would allow people to create individual investment accounts paid for with payroll taxes. With both entitlement programs, the age eligibility requirements would gradually go up. Advocates praise the plan as a realistic way to take on the nation’s out-of-control debt and prevent the utter collapse of a Medicare and Social Security program, while critics say it guts those programs and would leave old, vulnerable people fending for themselves. Most political consultants advise steering clear of the whole conversation: messing with Social Security and Medicare, they calculate, never wins votes — something Wisconsin Democrats have instantly homed in on.
“We will be talking about his oddball plan to end Medicare and privatize Social Security,” Graeme Zielinski, a spokesman for the state Democratic Party, said. “Republicans usually do a tap dance around the reality of the Republican fantasy of ending Social Security and Medicare. One thing you can say for him: he really wants to make it the reality.”
Mr. Zielinski also questioned Mr. Ryan’s professed passion about the deficit; where, he asked, was Mr. Ryan’s concern during the Bush administration? (Mr. Ryan’s staff counters that he has talked about these concerns and voted against several Republican spending bills over the years.)
For now, Mr. Ryan appears politically safe. His campaign has raised $2.1 million, more than in any of his six prior races.
His family has lived in these parts since 1851, and it shows. He calls the waitress at the hamburger joint by name. Older residents stop to fuss over whether he is eating enough.
Democrats, meanwhile, scrambled to find an opponent, eventually signing up John Heckenlively, who has never won office but said he was moved by the thought, “What, nobody is going to run?”
That is not to say that Democrats never win this district, a conglomeration of farm towns, industrial cities like Janesville and south Milwaukee suburbs. Mr. Obama won here.
Mr. Ryan has been talking about the ideas in the Roadmap since 2008, when he published an earlier version. During several town-hall-style meetings on a recent day, he received a few questions about Social Security and Medicare, but no pointed complaints. His plan, he tells one group, is not to end anything.
“If we did that, my mom would kill me,” Mr. Ryan said, adding that his mother, Betty, receives Social Security.
Later, Mr. Ryan said, “I don’t think these things are third rails anymore. People are ready for this.”
Mr. Ryan and his allies — who admit that the Roadmap is unlikely to get a real hearing in Congress soon — say Republican colleagues who have yet to support the idea are probably following the admonitions of political consultants. But Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California, who signed on to the Roadmap months ago, says candidates in 2012 will be forced to take a stand — up or down — on its ideas.
“The deficit isn’t going away, the entitlements aren’t getting better, and it’s tough times out there,” Mr. Nunes said. “The presidential candidates are going to have a problem with this.”
Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting from Washington.
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