WASHINGTON, D.C. — The official portrait of former speaker Paul Ryan was unveiled on Wednesday. The painting of the House’s 54th speaker will hang in the Speaker’s Lobby and Members’ Retiring Room.
His decades of public service were celebrated by congressional leaders, providing a rare moment of bipartisanship in a very divided Capitol.
While he was first elected into office in 1999, it would be about 15 more years until Ryan, 45, would become the youngest person to lead the House of Representatives since just after the Civil War.
“It was clear to pretty much everyone around that Paul was the right man at the right moment,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said during the event.
Ryan enjoyed a meteoric rise in Washington. Along with then-Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., and Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Ryan was one of the GOP’s so-called Young Guns. The three of them helped usher in the next generation of politicians through a Republican landslide in the 2010 midterms.
“We defended fiscal responsibility and economic opportunity,” said McCarthy during the ceremony. “We made a pledge to America, explaining we would govern differently. And we were fortunate to capture 63 seats that year.”
In 2012, he became a household name as Mitt Romney’s running mate for vice president. Republicans lost that election, but Ryan went on to grab the Speaker’s gavel three years later.
The fiscal conservative hawk then achieved his biggest lift: pushing then-President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and jobs act through the House.
“I’ve always been a policy guy, particularly when it comes to the tax code,” said Ryan during the ceremony. “So this was like a mountain climber reaching the top of Mount Everest. It was everything I had been working toward. And I finally got it.”
For years, @SpeakerRyan warned about the threat of the national debt. When he was @housebudgetGOP chair in 2012, our national debt was half what it is today. I wish more people had heeded his warnings back then. https://t.co/JYBBAjphRU
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) May 17, 2023
Democrats also showed support for Ryan. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., praised the former lawmaker from Janesville, Wis., for his commitment to his constituents and civility while in office.
“It was such a great moment,” said Scott Walker, former governor of Wisconsin. “It’s a testament to the four leaders here being two Democrats and Republicans, all talking about — even the Democrats — when they disagreed with him, he was not disagreeable. He was honorable and well studied. He fought passionately for his ideas, but he didn’t pick fights for the sake of fights but rather for what he believed in.”
Former House Speakers Newt Gingrich, Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner were also in attendance.
Ryan’s relationship with former President Donald Trump, however, was strained. Following his retirement in 2019, Ryan said he would not support Trump for another term in the White House. Ryan left Trump out of his speech Wednesday, opting to make a case for the return to civil discourse instead.
“Amid all of this cynicism and all of this polarization, we can never lose sight of the fact that as members of Congress, as leaders of Congress, we serve a greater good,” he said.