president and vice president. please welcome congressman paul ryan. congressman welcome, thank you for joining me today. it is a real pleasure to be here. mike: i called you one of my heroes and you are. you are one of the people who has scene a cerebralng;ñr, honet and forthright approach to some of the problems we face. most notely the huge deficits we are running and the debt we are racking up. what do we have to do to get this nation back on track to fiscal sanity? first, we have to decide what kind of country we want for the 21st century? do we want the american idea this system that gave us prosperity we ve enjoyed? or go down the european, cradle to grave path? that s a decision we have to make in this and the next election i would argue. we have to stop the spending spree and stop the job killing tax increases. the first two things we would do if we took over congress.