Speaker Paul Ryan Is in a Hurry to Craft GOP's 2016 Agenda
— -- While Republicans presidential candidates continue firing at one another on the bruising campaign trail, House Speaker Paul Ryan is mapping out a conservative agenda the GOP can run with in 2016.
"We can't sit around until July when we have a convention, we've got to get going now," Ryan told reporters Friday.
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Ryan, who successfully united a majority of House Republicans behind the $1.1 trillion spending deal Friday, wants to bring conservatives together behind a plan that gives voters "a really clear choice" in November.
"We owe people the right to decide if they want to stay on this path or not," he said.
The Wisconsin Republican is planning to huddle with his conference in January to craft a new GOP platform -– something that could end up resembling a next-generation "Contract With America," the governing proposal Republicans unveiled ahead of the 1994 midterm election, when they retook control of Congress.
Ryan said members would decide the timing and form of that plan, but parts of next year's strategy are already coming into focus.
Republicans will vote in January on a measure to symbolically repeal elements of Obamacare and deny Planned Parenthood federal funding, and later in the year on a promised Obamacare alternative, which Ryan said Republicans would put forward.
Ryan said passing a new authorization for the use of military force would be "a good symbol of American resolve," though there is little agreement in Congress on how to do so.
There could also be room for compromise on criminal justice reform with Democrats and President Obama, who invited Ryan to the White House for a meal in January.
Criminal justice reform, Ryan said, is "something where we can find common ground."
Ryan -– whose office isn’t completely free of the smell of former House Speaker John Boehner’s cigars –- said he hasn't sat down one-on-one with the GOP presidential candidates, but would "absolutely" trade notes on policy.
"We want people to feed us ideas so we can get a sense of what kind of reforms they want to see, including people running for president," he said.
Ryan isn't worried about Republicans losing their 58-seat majority in the House, even if the GOP selects presidential frontrunner Donald Trump as the party's presidential nominee.
"Whoever our nominee is going to be, House members are very close to their constituents," he said. "I think we’re in a good climate. Eight years of liberal, progressive policies have produced miserable results and I really don’t think the country is going to have more of the same."
