Quotes from Paul Ryan

I believe that if we do not prevent Medicare from going bankrupt, it will go bankrupt. And that will be bad for everybody. We have to tackle our debt crisis. We have to tackle the drivers of our debt.

Hey, I'm a Catholic deer hunter, I am happy to be clinging to my guns and my religion.

I want to bring accountability to the federal government. I want the federal government to respect the states.

The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst.

When you question this war on poverty, you get all the criticisms from adherents to the status quo who just don't want to see anything change. We got to have the courage to face that down, just as we did in the welfare reform of the late 1990s, and if we succeeded, we can help resuscitate this culture and get people back to work.

I learned a good deal about economics, and about America, from the author of the Reagan tax reforms - the great Jack Kemp. What gave Jack that incredible enthusiasm was his belief in the possibilities of free people, in the power of free enterprise and strong communities to overcome poverty and despair. We need that same optimism right now.

Here's the problem if you keep raising tax rates: You slow down economic growth.

So, in Europe, they're cutting people's retirement and health benefits. And that's what we want to avoid from happening. They're raising taxes, entering a recession. That's the kind of economic program that President Obama has put in place.

College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life.

What's missing is leadership in the White House. And the story that Barack Obama does tell, forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago - isn't it about time he assumed responsibility?

What matters to me is that I do what I think is right and I see, I'm a numbers guy, that's my attitude. I know we have a debt tsunami coming, we are bankrupting this country and I'm in a position where I can actually advance ideas to prevent that from happening. That's exactly what I should be doing.

I don't consult polls to tell me what my principles are or what our policies should be.

Activist government overreach and ongoing economic stagnation have shown us why Washington should not try to displace what is best left to civil society.

I believe in a free society, where aspiration and effort can make the difference in every life. Where your starting point is not your destiny and where your first chance is not your only chance.

I don't subscribe to relativism, whether it's in political philosophy, foreign policy or in life.

The condition of your birth doesn't determine the outcome of your life. This is America.

Do we believe that the goal of government is to promote equal opportunity for all Americans to make the most of their lives? Or, do we now believe that government's role is to equalize the results of peoples lives?

If you're running for president, you've got to do a lot of things to line up a candidacy. I've not done any of those things. It's not my plan. My plan is to be a good chairman of the House Budget Committee and fight for the fiscal sanity of this nation.

What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our Commander-in-Chief, what we heard today was a political broadside from our Campaigner-in-Chief.

We think there are better solutions to fighting poverty because we see what the War on Poverty has produced. It produced tens of trillions of dollars in spending. It has been a 51-year exercise, and yet the poverty rates in America today are not much better than when we started the War on Poverty.

Politics has become a blood sport that goes beyond just the person whose name is on the ballot.

Life is short, you better make the most of it.

President Obama is the kind of politician who puts promises on the record, and then calls that the record. But we are four years into this presidency. The issue is not the economy as Barack Obama inherited it, not the economy as he envisions it, but this economy as we are living it.

I call crony capitalism, where you take money from successful small businesses, spend it in Washington on favored industries, on favored individuals, picking winners and losers in the economy, that's not pro-growth economics. That's not entrepreneurial economics. That's not helping small businesses. That's cronyism, that's corporate welfare.