Rep. Ryan Talks Health Care, Taxes, and Government Funding on WTMJ and WCLO

WASHINGTON, May 3 -- Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., issued the following news release:

This morning, Congressman Ryan joined WTMJ's Jeff Wagner and WCLO's Tim Bremel to discuss ongoing efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare, reforming the tax code, and wins in the government funding legislation.

Government funding legislation:

"We finally severed this Obama rule that if you want to help the military, for every dollar you give the military you have to give a dollar to wasteful domestic spending, we do not do that in this bill. We [have] . . . the biggest border security funding increase in a decade, $21 billion increase in military [spending] to help [them]. . . . There are other wins in there like school choice programs in DC, reauthorized [and] we kept all the pro-life riders, so there are a lot of good wins in here."

Health care reform:

"Obamacare is failing: Double digit premium increases; insurance companies are pulling out of market places; people are left with one or even fewer choices, meaning no choices. We have to replace [Obamacare] with a law that works, with one that gives people more choices, lower prices, lower premiums, and we can do that while still protecting preexisting conditions."

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"There are multiple layers of protections for people with preexisting conditions in [the American Health Care Act]. . . . but it also gives states like Wisconsin the ability to get a waiver to do it our own way, on how we best think we can maintain protections for preexisting conditions [and] get premiums down. I met with the Wisconsin Insurance Commissioner, Ted Nickel, yesterday. And he was walking me through the HIRSP, the high risk pool we had in Wisconsin. It was a very good system. 10% of the people who bought their own health insurance--we call that the individual market--were in the HIRSP. What it did was it made it much cheaper for everybody else, the other 90% of Wisconsinites to buy more affordable health insurance. And so, we in Wisconsin had a better way of actually making sure that everybody had affordable healthcare coverage."

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"[The American Health Care Act] says states like Wisconsin can go do those kinds of things again, making sure you take care of people with preexisting conditions. And [there] is federal financing for your risk pools, something we've never had before in Wisconsin. And [there's] a refundable tax credit for people in the individual market to go buy a plan of their choosing."

Tax reform:

"American businesses, American employers are being taxed at much higher tax rate than our foreign competitors. The key thing is to simplify the code, make it easier for families and small businesses to comply with, and lower tax rates on businesses, so we can get faster economic growth [and] create more jobs. We tax our businesses at much, much higher tax rates than our foreign competitors tax theirs, and that is costing us . . . and it's slowing down our economy. And so we really think that [tax reform] is the crown jewel of an economic growth agenda. Regulatory relief and regulatory reform, which we're deep into doing, is a big part of this, but nothing holds a candle to the power of tax reform and what it can do to grow our economy."