It's Paul Ryan's turn to Step up to the Plate beginning this week With Budget Talks

Paul Ryan, the Republican Party's fiscal visionary, faces a major test in budget talks starting this week: Can he move from ideology and theoretical blueprints to practical deal-making? 

The influential House of Representatives Budget Committee chairman has a lot at stake, including his clout among Republican members of Congress and any aspirations he may have for the party's presidential nomination in 2016.

Ryan will be his party's leader on the budget negotiating panel that sprang from this month's deal to end a federal government shutdown and avert a potential default. It will convene on Wednesday for opening statements from its 29 members and faces a December 13 deadline to reach a deal that can be considered by the full House and Senate. 

In the past few years, Ryan hasn't been much for negotiating, and he hasn't had to. Since he took over as budget committee chairman in 2011, there haven't been formal budget negotiations, as Congress has simply lurched between stopgap spending extensions.

Ryan's budgets passed in the House have served mainly as manifestos for his conservative small-government budget vision: deep cuts to social programs, dramatically lower tax rates and radical reforms to expensive federal benefits programs. 

"Congressman Ryan has been instrumental in putting the large-scale issues of fiscal reform on the national agenda. What he's never done is lead an effort where you have to compromise to get something done," said Maya MacGuineas, who heads the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group pushing for deficit reduction.

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