By M.D. Kittle  MacIver News Service | July 7, 2017

[Madison, Wis...] Speaker Paul Ryan says he doesn't have presidential ambitions.

The Janesville Republican has long been comfortable in his role as "policy guy," a policy wonk with a sincere appreciation for the notion that while numbers can be spun, they don't lie.

"I'm fine right here," Ryan told MacIver News Service Friday morning during a discussion in Madison.

"Here," of course, is his job as Speaker of the House of Representatives, a position that comes with incredible power and unending pressure.

These days, Ryan spends a fair amount of time reminding his conservative colleagues on Capitol Hill of the covenant they made with the people who voted for them in November- the people who gave Republicans rare control of both houses of Congress and the White House.

Those voters did so premised on promises - that Republicans would at least begin to rein in a federal government that became more centralized and grabbed more and more power from states and citizens during the Obama Era. That means getting rid of Obamacare, reforming bloated entitlement programs, delivering on tax cuts, and removing the yoke of regulation from the shoulders of business, workers, and consumers. The results to date have been mixed.

While the House narrowly passed a sweeping health care bill aimed at replacing the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama's signature and imploding health care law, it has been a bruising, bitter battle that remains far from resolved in a Senate with little margin for defection. Republicans have had much more success on regulation reform.

While the nation's attention last month was on former FBI Director James Comey and political theories of Russian collusion, the GOP-led House passed a bill killing the Dodd-Frank regulations implemented during the Obama administration. Free market advocates say Dodd-Frank has strangled economic growth as it has preserved the much-despised notion of "too-big-to-fail" and the big taxpayer-funded bailouts of financial institutions that have followed.  READ it HERE