Today, the Washington Examiner held an editorial board meeting with House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. We asked if he was being vetted by the Romney campaign as a possible candidate for Vice-President.
"I'm not getting into that, I'm not changing any of my answers," Ryan protested. "I get asked this every time I walk down the street, I'm not giving you any answers."
When asked by the Examiner's Michael Barone about how he keeps up on foreign policy, Ryan said he spends a lot of time reading on the military and foreign policy, mentioning the "Bernard Lewis books," and traveling in the Middle East.
Ryan said that during his career in Congress, he worked on several Middle East trade agreements with moderate Muslim nations.
"I spent a lot of my time, over my career traveling the Middle East. That's probably where most of my travels have gone, I was in Afghanistan last December, I've been there a few times," he said.
But Ryan begged off any additional "auditioning questions" regarding the Vice Presidency and stated that he wanted to focus on his favorite topic, fiscal issues and entitlement reform.
We then asked Ryan about how important it was to have a person fluent in fiscal policy on the presidential ticket, where Ryan was a little more forthcoming.
"The biggest crisis in this generation is a fiscal crisis, and its our fiscal policy," Ryan said. "And our fiscal policy is on a crash course with our monetary policy. That is the biggest existential threat facing our country in our generation."
Ryan added that he has spent his career getting the Republican party "right" on these ideas for the sake of executing solutions.
"It's no good being a conservative and giving great speeches at AEI, if you can't move the center of gravity in these debates and put these ideas in practice," Ryan said, adding that the Republican party had a "narrowing window of opportunity" to act on these issues.
Ryan added that as head of the Budget Committee, he was in a good position to keep the Republican party focused on fiscal policy.
"I'm in a good position to make a difference, and I think I've done that, and that's what I'm focused on, so I'm not trying to audition or say this position or that position," Ryan said. "I think that we've done a lot right now where we are and I want to see this thing through."
