A Young Republican With a Sweeping Agenda

Still early on a recent weekday morning, the mostly elderly crowd that half-filled a hall in this small town looked like it might be thinking about another cup of coffee. But Representative Paul D. Ryan, the rangy Republican who represents this southeastern Wisconsin district, was in full PowerPoint roll, gesturing and barking out, in staccato tones, why the nation must make major changes to Social Security and Medicare.

“The question is, Could this happen here?” Mr. Ryan said, as an image of a burning street from the recent riots in Greece flashed on a screen behind him.

“Do you want this welfare state, which puts us down this tipping point, advances this culture of dependency, moves us away from the America idea toward more of a Western European social democracy welfare state? Do you want that which invites a debt crisis? Or the alternative party is offering you an opportunity society on top of a safety net where we reclaim these ideals and principles that founded this country. That’s what we owe you. And if we get back in office and we shrink from that challenge, shame on us.”

In this highly charged election season with both houses of Congress at stake, not a lot of politicians are lining up publicly behind Mr. Ryan. He is, nonetheless, suddenly a rising star in some corners. And like many other politicians whose ideas were once considered extreme, only to later be mainstream — like Ronald Reagan — Mr. Ryan is seen as on the leading edge of something.

Why? His “Roadmap for America’s Future,” an elaborate (critics say drastic) plan that aims to erase the federal debt by 2063, simplify the tax code and significantly alter (his critics say eviscerate) Medicare and Social Security. When asked to handicap the 2012 Republican presidential field, Sarah Palin called Mr. Ryan “sharp.” Newt Gingrich dubbed him “extraordinarily formidable.” And, in a column, George Will imagined him as vice president to a President Mitch Daniels (now the Republican governor of Indiana).

Mr. Ryan, 40 and the ranking Republican on the House budget committee, has been in Congress 12 years, but it may have been President Obama who gave him and his Roadmap the broadest attention yet. This year, Mr. Obama alluded to the plan as a “serious proposal,” though the White House promptly made it clear that it had problems with its details.

Mr. Ryan’s Roadmap served as an answer to those who have accused Republicans of saying no, while having no ideas of their own. It has taken fierce criticism from Democrats, who seem content to have something to hate, but it is drawing a far more awkward, unwanted dividing line for Republicans over the sensitive politics of entitlement programs.

Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, the minority leader, has praised Mr. Ryan but said the Roadmap would not be a part of the Republican agenda this fall.

“There are parts of it that are well done,” Mr. Boehner told reporters last month. “Other parts I have some doubts about, in terms of how good the policy is.”

In fact, only 13 House Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors, and Republican leaders, hoping for gains in the fall and, ultimately, in 2012, seem concerned at the possibility that the Roadmap may eventually become something candidates will be forced to take a position on. After all, what candidate wants to talk about major changes to Medicare and Social Security?

Even some of Mr. Ryan’s loudest supporters are reluctant to support the Roadmap top to bottom. Mr. Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, lavished praise on Mr. Ryan’s intellect and discipline, but did not go so far as to endorse the Roadmap.

“I think it’s a very good starting point,” Mr. Gingrich said. “It’s not a yes-no. When you undertake change on that scale, you have to have a national conversation.”

Fit from years of an intense exercise program called P90X and with hair as thick as Rod R. Blagojevich’s (and cut in a more contemporary fashion), Mr. Ryan has become a regular on the cable news circuit, and a book about conservative politics that he co-wrote — “Young Guns” — will include his picture on the cover when it comes out this fall.

But Mr. Ryan is still a wonk. He studied economics in college, once intended to seek an advanced degree from the University of Chicago’s school of economics, and meant to become an economist. Somewhere between stints working for Jack Kemp, a mentor, and Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, he meandered into public policy. The inner nerd seeps through: he often sleeps on a cot in the office, says he has “every 15-minute interval” until September scheduled, and writes up these PowerPoints himself (“I really like PowerPoint”).

Mr. Ryan favors small government and gun rights and opposes abortion. Mr. Obama, he says, is a pleasant person — not “nefarious or evil” — but extremely liberal, and “accelerating our path to cradle-to-grave welfare programs.”

The Roadmap, which cuts spending decades into the future, is packed with detail, though not everyone agrees what it would yield. People could choose a simplified, two-rate tax system. Corporate income tax would be replaced with a business consumption tax.

For people now younger than 55, Medicare would become a voucher program in which they would buy private insurance, and Social Security would allow people to create individual investment accounts paid for with payroll taxes. With both entitlement programs, the age eligibility requirements would gradually go up. Advocates praise the plan as a realistic way to take on the nation’s out-of-control debt and prevent the utter collapse of a Medicare and Social Security program, while critics say it guts those programs and would leave old, vulnerable people fending for themselves. Most political consultants advise steering clear of the whole conversation: messing with Social Security and Medicare, they calculate, never wins votes — something Wisconsin Democrats have instantly homed in on.

“We will be talking about his oddball plan to end Medicare and privatize Social Security,” Graeme Zielinski, a spokesman for the state Democratic Party, said. “Republicans usually do a tap dance around the reality of the Republican fantasy of ending Social Security and Medicare. One thing you can say for him: he really wants to make it the reality.”

Mr. Zielinski also questioned Mr. Ryan’s professed passion about the deficit; where, he asked, was Mr. Ryan’s concern during the Bush administration? (Mr. Ryan’s staff counters that he has talked about these concerns and voted against several Republican spending bills over the years.)

For now, Mr. Ryan appears politically safe. His campaign has raised $2.1 million, more than in any of his six prior races.

His family has lived in these parts since 1851, and it shows. He calls the waitress at the hamburger joint by name. Older residents stop to fuss over whether he is eating enough.

Democrats, meanwhile, scrambled to find an opponent, eventually signing up John Heckenlively, who has never won office but said he was moved by the thought, “What, nobody is going to run?”

That is not to say that Democrats never win this district, a conglomeration of farm towns, industrial cities like Janesville and south Milwaukee suburbs. Mr. Obama won here.

Mr. Ryan has been talking about the ideas in the Roadmap since 2008, when he published an earlier version. During several town-hall-style meetings on a recent day, he received a few questions about Social Security and Medicare, but no pointed complaints. His plan, he tells one group, is not to end anything.

“If we did that, my mom would kill me,” Mr. Ryan said, adding that his mother, Betty, receives Social Security.

Later, Mr. Ryan said, “I don’t think these things are third rails anymore. People are ready for this.”

Mr. Ryan and his allies — who admit that the Roadmap is unlikely to get a real hearing in Congress soon — say Republican colleagues who have yet to support the idea are probably following the admonitions of political consultants. But Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California, who signed on to the Roadmap months ago, says candidates in 2012 will be forced to take a stand — up or down — on its ideas.

“The deficit isn’t going away, the entitlements aren’t getting better, and it’s tough times out there,” Mr. Nunes said. “The presidential candidates are going to have a problem with this.”

Click here to read the full story.