In The News

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.”

By: AIF Staff

Los Angeles, CA – This week, at the 28^th annual Milken Institute’s Global Conference, AIF President and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan joined a panel of experts to discuss America’s federal budget and potential solutions to our growing national debt. 

Joined on stage by Alan Schwartz of Guggenheim Partners, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Congressional Budget Office Director Phillip Swagel, Committee for a Responsible Budget President Maya MacGuineas, and moderator Josh Barro, Ryan shared his thoughts on the reconciliation bill being debated by Congress, how to prospectively reform and strengthen entitlement programs, and ways to jump-start economic growth. 

To view the entire Milken Institute panel discussion, entitled: Balance Sheet: US Government and the National Debt, click here. Excerpts of Ryan’s remarks follow.

As mandatory spending drives the debt, discretionary spending drives debate on the Hill 

“Domestic discretionary spending — there’s an appetite to cut that. I think the budget that came out yesterday proposes a 22.6% cut to that, but that’s about it. 

If you look at the current reconciliation bill, it has spending in it. It has $300 billion in spending for the Department of Defense and for immigration and border security. The $880 billion that the Energy and Commerce Committee is trying to get out of Medicaid, we’ll see. They are having a hard time putting the votes together for that. 

This Congress isn’t what we used to be. I don’t think either of the two political parties have any real appetite for entitlement reform, which is where the money is. When you’re looking at three quarters of the budget, which is mandatory spending, putting your interest payments aside, it’s the mandatory entitlement programs that are driving this debt and both parties have, more or less, been taken over by populism which takes a stand against doing something about that. 

It wasn’t too long ago that we would make these proposals and pass these bills, but that is just not where we are. I just do not see an appetite in Congress or in the White House today to go after the big driver of our debt, which is mandatory spending.”

Congress is backsliding when it comes to fiscal discipline

“What’s frustrating, as a recovering politician, is we were more serious before, and we have relapsed in our seriousness of dealing with this. What’s frustrating about this is all of these problems are within our control as a country. We see this coming. We know what we need to do. We could fix this – but we won’t or we are not, and it’s because our political situation has deteriorated. 

To give you a sense of this, before I was Speaker and Ways and Means Chair, I was Chairman of the Budget Committee. Ten years ago, I passed a budget off the House floor with 231 votes that cut $6.4 trillion out of the baseline. We raised the retirement age. We means tested Medicare. We block-granted Medicaid. We did food stamps with able-bodied work requirements. If you took that budget on today’s baseline, we would be cutting $11.6 trillion out of the baseline. Ten years ago, we had the votes for that. Ten years ago, we passed that off the House floor. 

They will be lucky if they can get $2 trillion in this reconciliation bill out of this baseline, and by the way, that won’t be a net of $2 trillion, because of the $300 billion in new spending, so it’ll be $1.7 trillion if you’re lucky. We have deteriorated in our ability to take these things on, and that’s what is so frustrating about this. This is the most predictable crisis we’ve ever seen in our country.  

We know Treasury auctions may fail, we just don’t know when, and we know what the Federal Reserve will do when that happens…. And we could avoid this, but it doesn’t look like we’re going to, and that’s what is so frustrating about all of this.” 

Prospective reforms and private sector know-how can extend entitlement programs’ solvency

“We have learned a lot about how to run retirement and healthcare systems since we started these programs in 1932 and 1965, so there’s a lot more we know. In Medicare’s example, the Federal Employee Health Benefit System is a very popular system that works well and that has far lower costs increases than current Medicare. 

We have roadmaps on what to emulate to bring good reforms and for the scorekeepers, if you do something like that, you’re effectively taking a program that is a defined-benefit, open-ended program and putting a fixed growth rate on it and basically turning it into a defined-contribution program and then, underneath that, you’re doing things like you described like raising the retirement age, means-testing the benefit, subsidizing a person’s premium based on health and wealth. That model works. It scores pretty well.  It gets you out of the woods, but it is a combination of newer things that we’ve learned in society about how better to run these programs using private sector choice and competition along with those “austere” screw-turning things. 

The good thing about all of this is that if we step ahead of this, we don’t have to [make benefit changes] to current seniors. It can be prospective, so anyone who is in or near retirement today, this won’t apply to them. It will be for tomorrow’s retirees — let’s just say 60 and below, so you have a little time to prepare and so politically, you can survive because you’re not taking benefits away from current seniors. If we wait until we get into a really bad situation, we might not be able to do that. If we’re doing urgent budget surgery to dodge the vigilantes in the bond markets, we might not be able to do that.”  

Bipartisan fiscal commission “with teeth” is the likely path forward

“I think the only game in town right now is a fiscal commission with teeth. 

I was on Bowles-Simpson. Bowles-Simpson was literally dead before we left the room in the last meeting because the President of the United States and the Speaker of the House at the time put out press releases saying we’re not doing it. And therefore, they didn’t. 

So, [we need] a fiscal commission with teeth, like the Greenspan 1984 Commission on Social Security, that requires Congress to vote on it, not amend it, not filibuster it. Maybe a President in the second-half of his last term looking for a legacy to save the dollar and dodge a debt crisis, could do that. 

But to Steve’s point, it has to be bipartisan and the lynchpin is a debt limit deal or fiscal deal where you have a tight Congress and that is the price of getting that package passed – which is requiring a statutory commission, to bring to Congress something like that.” 

Stablecoin legislation will strengthen America’s fiscal standing globally

“On the good news front, I think Congress is going to pass the stablecoin legislation this Summer and that is going to help spread the dollar more widely across the world. I think it’s going to digitize the dollar and buttress the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, so I think we have good news coming on the dollar front.” 

Political obstacles and demagoguery limit potential for solutions

“We are never going to cut benefits for current seniors. We are going to make changes for the next generation so we can cash-flow the program for current seniors and save the program from insolvency and bankruptcy. But what politicians say is: “If I do that and raise the retirement age in ten years or taper the benefit formula for future generations, the ad run against me will be, “I’m cutting benefits for current seniors.” Everyone will get confused and I’m going to lose.” That’s basically the political calculation and that’s the problem. And that is why these things will have to be bipartisan…”

“The problem for Republicans and conservatives is the Democrats want the revenue, but they won’t give us the spending cuts. We’re not just going to give you more revenue to feed this unsustainable spending trajectory. The only way a deal like this ever works is if you have them paired together where you know you are getting real spending cuts and when you know you’re getting real, actual spending changes to the baseline and then, and only then, are conservatives willing to entertain this.”  

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