By: AIF Staff
NEW YORK, NY — Ahead of the 2026 midterms, former Speaker of the House and American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan was a featured guest on Bloomberg’s Wall Street Week , hosted by David Westin. In a wide-ranging interview, they examined the key policy issues on voters’ minds in the run-up to the election and Ryan outlined the dangers of America’s growing$40 trillion national debt, detailed the necessity of entitlement reform, contextualized the backlash against artificial intelligence infrastructure, and offered a defense of free-market capitalism in response to rising populism and polarization.
Excerpts and video of Ryan’s interview on Bloomberg’s Wall Street Week follow.
Video: The $40 trillion fiscal challenge and backsliding on debt reduction
“Before I was Ways and Means Chair, I was the Chairman of the Budget Committee for House Republicans. I really cut my teeth in Congress writing the federal budget and back in those days, in the 2010s, we believed at the time that we could draft budget plans that actually paid off the debt. These were not just plans to balance the budget, but that paid off the debt. It takes years to do it, but we passed 4 budgets in those days in the House that showed how to pay off the debt. We addressed Medicare and Medicaid and all the drivers of our debt.
We had politics at a point where Republicans could offer specific plans for debt reduction and politically survive. But we did not win the 2012 presidential election and what ended up happening is our party leaders, and Trump was at the top of the pile, concluded that [debt reduction] was not good electoral politics. And so, it was jettisoned.
There was a time and day where Republicans were offering very specific coherent debt reduction plans which would have avoided a debt crisis…
It’s not too late, but I think we’re losing wiggle room and it’s really kind of a question for the bond markets. If we could pass a plan that solves the entitlement problem… and if we could pass a plan today that shows debt reduction over time, I would like to argue that the bond markets will give us credit for that.”
Video: Tax reform can yield higher revenues, but spending restraint is essential
“I think we are already on a trajectory to get better revenues but let me just say this: I think you could probably get more revenues from the current tax code if you reform the tax system that we have today. We are at a little over 17% of GDP for our tax code. Historically, it has been closer to 18%. I think through tax reform, you could probably get the revenue line up to about 20% of GDP without sacrificing economic growth.
But there’s no way you could get beyond that, in my opinion, without really damaging the economy. And the problem is our spending is at 24% of GDP and going higher. You really can’t chase your spending line with a revenue line, although you could probably get more revenue with a better tax system.
I’m a big fan of the cash flow tax. I think that’s a smarter way to do it. I think it’s more pro-growth. It’s actually very pro-labor and I think you can get probably better revenues through a cashflow tax. But you can’t fix this problem unless you address spending.”
Video: Local data center backlash as a proxy for wider A.I. fears
“I’m from Wisconsin. In my hometown of Janesville, we have a ballot initiative on a data center to go into our old General Motors plant location and it’s like a 50-50 proposition. In Wisconsin, all the ads you see on TV are accusing the other candidate of being more in favor of data centers than the other person. I see it as a proxy on just AI itself.
The [hyperscalers] basically go out there and say: ‘This is going to either take everyone’s job or kill everybody. But please, we need more data centers to do this.’ I think they were really horrible at presenting themselves and the way they entered communities was wrong.
Data centers are going to be built because they have to be built. We cannot afford to lose this race on technology to tyrannies like China. So, we have to build data centers. The question is, can we do it in a way that it benefits everybody in the community?”
Video: Defeating grievance-based populism requires political leadership
“We’re in such a reactionary political moment these days and the way politics works is so algorithmically driven by digitization that it’s a new challenge that we’ve never faced as a human race. We’ve had populist moments before and we’ve followed those populist moments with returns to normalcy…
The question is, will we return to normalcy with our politics after this populist fervor dissipates? The question is, in this digital era where all of us live our lives in this sort of digital cul-de-sac with our feeds on our phones feeding us our biases, estranging us from other people who don’t think like us, can we get through that?
I think the answer is yes. I think Churchill probably said it best. The Americans will solve the problem only after they exhausted all the other possibilities. I think democracy is being stress-tested in two ways. Internally, like I just described, are we disunifying, are we polarizing, can we reach a consensus around the center of the bell curve? Most Americans are in the center, center-left or center-right, not in the extremes. So, can we reach a consensus in the center? Can our politics get there? That’s question one and that’s stress test one.
Stress test two is tyrannies who are trying to exploit our freedoms to turn ourselves against each other. China and Russia in particular, through the things they do to try and exploit our public opinion, are trying to divide democracies from within each other. I really do believe we’ll get through this because I think at the end of the day, our country of all countries is extraordinarily resilient. We are still a good and decent country that believes in the building blocks of freedom and the principles that make us who we are. And I think we will revive these principles.
I think we’ll get there, but it’s going to take political leadership to do that. It’s going to take leaders who set down the exploitation of differences, who are not aimed toward populism and grievance-based populism, but are seeking to inspire and include and direct people to a North Star.
Reagan did it after Carter. I think the ambitious politician of tomorrow is going to say, ‘I think the country is sick of being polarized and I want to unify and inspire and be inclusive and be a problem-solver and demonstrate problem-solving and get stuff done.’ Because the problem with grievance-based populism is you keep talking about problems, but you never solve the problems. Sooner or later the country says this isn’t working. I’m sick of my problems going unsolved. I’m going to take a risk on this proven problem-solver. So, I would like to think that that’s where politics are going to go and that the ambitious political people of tomorrow will go there, offer that, and that can get us out of this. That is sort of the arc of the story that I think will happen and that I hope will happen.”