In The News

By: AIF Staff

Simi Valley, CA – Last week,, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, CA, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan joined the Reagan National Economic Forum for a day-long conference on how policymakers, innovators, and entrepreneurs can channel the legacy of Ronald Reagan to meet our fiscal and economic challenges.

As part of the Forum, Ryan participated in a panel discussion on the moral imperative of economic growth. He was accompanied on stage by Larry Kudlow of Fox Business, former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender, and former Securities and Exchange Commissioner Mark Uyeda.

To watch the panel discussion, click here. Excerpts from former Speaker Ryan’s remarks, edited lightly for clarity, follow.

Ryan: Next generation of supply-siders must continue Reagan’s prosperous legacy

“Ronald Reagan brought a new economic philosophy to government. Ronald Reagan brought the supply side school of thought to government. Ronald Reagan put this on his back and made it law and the prosperity that ensued after the Carter years was really unprecedented.

And the intellectual fathers of this movement were Larry Kudlow, Bob Bartley, George Gilder, Jude Wanninski, Paul Craig Roberts, and a whole bunch of other first-generation supply-siders who Ronald Reagan grabbed, and they got this [economic doctrine] over the finish line with his partner in Congress, Jack Kemp, and they did it.

I was a staffer for Jack Kemp. We learned under you guys, and we became supply-siders 2.0. The 1^st generation supply-siders were about sound money, and tax rates were as high as 92% in this country, so they did Kemp-Roth tax cuts, then they did TEFRA, and brought it down. Then, the 2^nd generation supply-siders…. extended the supply-side mantra from not just monetary policy and tax policy, but to regulatory policy and educational policy, like school choice, and that fueled our movement for a while. It fueled the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

I would say, to bookend today, we are probably due a 3^rd generation wave of reforms for a 3^rd generation of supply-side economics. I think you saw a little bit of that today at lunch with Marc Andreesen and Joe Lonsdale with all this amazing technology that’s coming.

So hopefully, we can be inspired by our forefathers like Ronald Reagan, the 1^st generation supply-siders, and the 2^nd generation supply-siders who are around, to come up with a new, additive movement with pro-growth economics and the moral imperative that comes with it to meet this moment with growth and opportunity as we have in the past and be inspired by the Reagan example.”

Ryan: Benefits of a growing economy extend and improve our politics and our culture

“In a growing environment, the politics and culture that come from pro-growth economics is a positive sum game. It’s win-win. We strive for equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome in people’s lives  Your politics are better. It is not “one side wins and one side loses.” It is positive sum, an additive game, and the populism that comes from that kind of movement is positive. We are happy about other people’s success. We don’t want a class-based society. We want a society punctuated by upward mobility.

If you don’t have that, you are going to go into a darker, populist, zero-sum game kind of thinking and that would be the antithesis of the Reagan economic miracle that hopefully we are in the midst of renewing today.”

Ryan: Trump Administration should pull on 3 economic growth levers: Tax Policy, Deregulation, Certainty on trade

“We have got two great growth levers that this Administration is pulling on right now: Get this tax bill done, add some growth functions to it like boosting up expensing for plants, equipment, and new builds, but this deregulation is also really important.

Quantifiably, the deregulation [agenda] is almost as good as this supply-side tax policy. What deregulation gets you is a business climate that gives you more certainty so you can take risks and start businesses. This gives you more productivity, and that gets you more take-home pay.

In the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, one of the key things that we were trying to achieve was to boost productivity in the economy because we know that boosts take-home pay. Real wages went up. Living standards went up and the two lowest quintile earners had the fastest real-income wage growth until COVID-19 hit.

I hope the trade fight is the Larry Kudlow plan like it was in Trump 1.0 which is: Get to these reciprocal agreements. I understand there’s a lot of blustering and negotiating, but if the goal of this is to get these reciprocal agreements with our allies where we are lowering barriers and then we have our China fight, which we all agree on, then we will have reduced that [tariff] uncertainty which, right now, is plaguing the economy.

So hopefully, we can pull three levers which are deregulate the economy, certainty on tax policy that is pro-growth, and then get to these reciprocal trade agreements that open markets for American workers and American businesses. If we do that, we will have a really good growth picture.

My hope is then, after we have this pro-growth fiscal policy, the Federal Reserve has a little more certainty. They start calming rates down and we can start working on the long-term debt driven by entitlements which, to me, would be the capstone of an extremely successful Administration on economic policy.”

For more on Speaker Ryan’s thoughts on Ronald Reagan, his legacy, and how it informs modern policymakers, check out his interviews with Guy Benson and Larry Kudlow from the Reagan Library.

By: AIF Staff

Simi Valley, CA – Ahead of the Reagan National Economic Forum, Paul Ryan joined The Guy Benson Show to break down the One, Big, Beautiful Bill, explaining why it will spur economic growth and upward mobility. In the interview, Ryan detailed the erroneous criticisms leveled by Democrats about this bill and the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. He also praised Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republican Leadership’s deft ability to pass this legislation out of the House and prevent trillions of dollars in potential tax increases from hurting American families and small businesses. 

Listen to the full interview here or check out a few of Ryan’s responses, edited lightly for clarity, below.  

Extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is critical to preventing a debt crisis:

“If you want to prevent a debt crisis this country, there are two things that you have got to do. You have to get your spending under control, and you have to have a faster growing economy. This [One, Big, Beautiful bill] gets you the faster growing economy. 

The same things that were said about our bill in 2017, which this current bill being considered extends, are being said right now. It’s basically people saying: “This is going to do nothing but add to the deficit and the debt,” but there is no calculation being made about what would happen to the economy [if you don’t act]. 

[If you don’t act,] the economy would get hit with an enormous tax increase and it wouldn’t just be bad for families and people with kids who receive the child tax credit, but also for businesses, most of whom file their taxes as individuals.” 

The pro-growth legacy of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

“What I’m most proud of is the fact that [the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act] really gave people a big pay increase and provided a big increase in living standards. I mean, COVID obviously smacked our country and our economy pretty hard, but when you increase productivity, that’s a thing economists really think about and care about and the tax code really affects that. 

When you increase productivity, you end up increasing living standards and you increase real wages, meaning people’s pay goes up faster than prices. And so, we saw the fastest increase in real wages for lower-income workers that we had seen in about 20 years. We saw a real material gain in the prosperity and the livelihoods of blue-collar workers and that, to me, was one of the best achievements we had in this bill.”

A growing economy is key to American dominance in the 21^st century:

“We need growth, and this [reconciliation bill] is the best growth lever we have. I think there are two good growth levers that the Trump Administration is pulling on: deregulation and this tax bill.

Deregulation takes a long time. You have to put people in agencies and then you have this thing called the Administrative Procedures Act that takes a long time. So, to have a better regulatory footprint for businesses to take risks, expand and hire people, it takes a long time. You can’t do that in a few months. We need regulatory certainty and that’s going to take time, so then you also need tax policy. 

Both of those things are great growth levers that the Administration is going to be pulling on, but you have to get this [One, Big, Beautiful Bill] passed…. We have projections by some noted economists that we could have a recession this year and I don’t want to risk that, so they have got to pass this bill, in my opinion, to help guarantee that we don’t go into a recession and don’t have a huge tax increase, which would be just devastating. I don’t know how you avoid a recession if you don’t get this bill passed.” 

Praising Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans’ deft handling of reconciliation:

“[Speaker Mike Johnson has a harder job that I did. I had a much better vote margin than he has. We wrote the original bill, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and I lost some “SALT-y people.” I call them “SALT-y people.” I lost some votes from Members representing New York and California, these high tax states because of SALT. 

Speaker Johnson has no margin, and he was able to put this thing together and get it out of the House. I’m really impressed with his leadership and with his results. He is delivering results with a razor thin majority. So honestly, everybody in this country should be grateful to Mike Johnson for his leadership skills.”

By: AIF Staff

Simi Valley, CA – Earlier this week, former Speaker of the House and AIF President Paul Ryan was interviewed on Fox Business’ Kudlow, appearing live from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Talking ahead of the Reagan National Economic Forum, Ryan and Kudlow discussed how current elected leaders can channel President Reagan’s growth-oriented approach to economic policy.

To watch Ryan’s interview on how President Reagan’s legacy applies to our present policy challenges, click here, or check out the excerpts below.

President Reagan’s enduring legacy:

“He ended the Cold War. He had a thesis for how to win the Cold War – peace through strength. He applied that thesis. It worked. It ended, not technically on Reagan’s watch but under his successor’s watch, and like you, you are one of the authors of the supply side movement and you were a big part of that movement in the Administration, he changed economics.

[President Reagan] changed economics, not just for the conservative movement and Republican Party, but for America and for the world. He made us a prosperous country again.

Remember the Carter Days with the stagflation and the malaise? Ronald Reagan made us feel good about ourselves as Americans and he made our country prosperous again because he brought to the economic doctrine to life that you, Jude Wanniski, Art Laffer, Bob Mundell and Jack Kemp and others brought to Washington to completely change the place and we all benefitted from it.”

Today’s tax policies draw inspiration from President Reagan:

“The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which I was a part of, and which is now the “One, Big, Beautiful Bill,” which is an extension of that, this all got started with Ronald Reagan.

This pro-growth economics, limited government, free enterprise doctrine is what got started by Ronald Reagan and that’s what the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that the first Trump Administration put in place did.  It’s what they are going to do now. I’m pretty confident the bill will get passed and it was all built upon this edifice that was created by Ronald Reagan.”