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Who Is Paul Ryan? The Man Who Could Be Speaker

CBN

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Rep. Paul Ryan is one of the top candidates being discussed in the media as a possible contender for House Speaker.

The buzz about Ryan comes after House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy shocked Republicans Thursday, announcing that he will not seek the post.

While Ryan has stated that he does not want the post, it's unclear of the GOP will attempt to draft him anyway.

Ryan is being seen by some as a good possibiltiy because he was already fully vetted after Mitt Romney picked him as his running mate in the 2012 presidential election.

At that time, CBN's David Brody sat down with Ryan for a one-on-one interview.

Both then and now, Ryan has served as Chairman of the House Budget Committee, and his credentials as a fiscal conservative are well known.

Ryan's main love is assessing numbers. His bread and butter is the economy. As House Budget Chairman, he has tried to restructure Medicare and take serious steps to rein in spending.

While liberals see potential cuts to federal programs as mean-spirited, Ryan maintains it's morally right to be fiscally responsible and relies on his conservative Catholic views to shape public policy.

"The notion that you can divorce these principles, these matters of faith between private life and public life that doesn't jive with the thinking of a Catholic," Ryan said.

Ryan is also insulted with the Obama administration's decision that forced Catholic institutions to violate their conscience by paying for contraception services in their healthcare plans for employees. Many of those organizations are suing the government.

"The problem is we shouldn't have to go to court to sue our federal government to protect our civil liberties," Ryan said.

Ryan is also committed to calling out the Federal Reserve, having years ago opposed their easy money policy called "quantitative easing," or QE2.

"What this is is it's the Federal Reserve and the monetary policy trying to bail out the fact that we have terrible leadership on fiscal policy from President Obama," he said.

Ryan's history, his unwavering approach to issues or the fact that he's been successful in life isn't too surprising to those that know him. At 16, he had a life changing experience when he discovered his faither dead at home.

"My dad's secretary called to say where is he? He's got clients in his office. He was a small town lawyer and I went to wake him up and he was dead. He had been dead for some time. He had died of a heart attack in the middle of the night," Ryan said.

"That's something that no person should ever have to go through," he recalled.

Ryan called the moment a punch in the gut and it led to some soul searching.

"I became that much more stronger in my convictions, in my faith. And it was one of those sort of moments in a person's life that just was a pivotal moment, a trajectory-making moment. And I just decided I'm going to take life on and make it count because it is precious and short," he said.

Ryan is making the most of his life so far and nobody, not he knows exactly how the story will end.

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