Paul Ryan Poised to Seize Ways and Means Prize

For most members of Congress, the chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee is the ultimate prize, a treasure trove of power and campaign cash cracked open after decades in the trenches.

Paul Ryan is about to get all that and more before he turns 45. The 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate is poised to take charge of the committee in January, giving him a chance to put his limited-government philosophy into practice and test his ability to forge compromises.

The committee will let Ryan advance his plans to cut tax rates, consolidate programs for low-income households and implement a more market-based approach to Medicare. He can bank the millions in donations that flow to the chairman and raise his national profile even higher as he contemplates a presidential campaign.

“Now, you’re actually talking about where the rubber meets the road,” said Bill Hoagland, a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington who was a Senate Republican staff member with Ryan in the 1990s. “He has a following out there, and if anything, it’s going to put pressure on him to produce, perform and actually govern.”

Requires Compromise

The post comes with peril. Any substantial accomplishments -- at least for the two years that President Barack Obama will remain in office -- would require compromising with Democrats, which could hurt Ryan’s standing with the Republican base.

Yet significant progress toward Ryan’s philosophical ideals would require making choices on entitlement programs and tax breaks that may not be popular with the broader electorate. That’s a complication for his possible presidential aspirations -- and potentially those of other Republicans running in 2016 who will be pressed on whether they support his approach.

“It’s like having a wife and a mistress,” said Representative Jim McDermott, a Washington Democrat and Ways and Means member. “You can’t satisfy either one of them. So he’s going to have an impossible situation for himself.”

Ryan, a 44-year-old from Janesville, Wisconsin, hasn’t decided yet whether he’ll seek the presidency in 2016, and he’s young enough to wait four or eight more years to run. He also has professed a lack of interest in another promotion, to be speaker of the House.

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