Paul Ryan, the man who wants to avoid “European sclerosis”

Interested in the world’s economy? There’s somebody you should meet. He doesn’t have an outstanding experience in the private sector but is determined to drastically cut U.S. government spending, boost market flexibility and avoid the “clouds” that are coming from Europe. If Republicans make it to the White House in november, Congressman Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s pick for vice president, will have a bigger say than the president. If not, he will too.

A 42-year-old Tea Party member, Ryan repudiates many aspects of the Bush era, like many of his peers in Washington, and is a convinced fiscal conservative. In his relentless battle against Barack Obama, he criticises his early health-care proposal and climate-change program. Obama’s “European” style of government has slowered America’s economic recovery, he says. In his view, most public needs such as retirement are better in the hands of the marketplace. That is why he wants to transform Medicare into a voucher system that would pay beneficiaries a limited amount to buy a private insurance.

“More than any other politician, the House Budget Chairman has defined those stakes well as a generational choice about the role of government and whether America will once again become a growth economy or sink into interest-group dominated decline,” a Wall Street Journal’s op-ed says.

For The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, “Romney has made the most daring decision of his political career.”

Has he? What will be his blueprint in the Oval Office?

Ryan has been called the core of the modern Republican party and a data-driven politician. Even if he is not the most absolutist (he voted for the bailout of big banks known as TARP and the car industry bailout and he is less conservative on social issues), the seven-term House member is the Tea Party token Romney needs to reach those who want to make federal government smaller and fiercely oppose Democrats.

Remember: Ryan will be a key person after the elections, when the very awaited fiscal debate takes place. And when the time to engage the discussion about Europe comes, he has made his point:

“If we make the wrong choice, the U.S. will succumb to European sclerosis, with painful consequences for the free world,” he states in this plan, called Paul Ryan’s prosperity action.