Ryan: I’d drive Romney’s bus in 2016

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) dodged questions about his 2016 plans Wednesday but said he would be a big backer of Mitt Romney if he were to make another run for the White House.

“I’d drive his bus if he asked me to,” Ryan, who ran alongside Romney for vice president in 2012, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Ryan said that he believed that a lot of voters now had “buyer’s remorse” about giving Obama a second term.

{mosads}“A lot of the things [Romney] said in the campaign, projections he made … were true,” he said.

The House GOP heavyweight sidestepped questions about whether he plans to mount his own presidential bid in 2016, saying, “I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do on that.”

Ryan used the interview to tout his new book, in which he lays out his vision for the United States. The policy manifesto could serve as the foundation for a presidential run, as similar books have for other candidates.

The Wisconsin Republican said it’s not enough for the GOP to simply criticize the Obama administration.

“I, as an elected leader, ought to show what I would do differently,” he said, and give “voters in this country a meaningful choice.”

Ryan also dodged questions on whether he would aim to take over the powerful House Ways and Means Committee in 2015 after current Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) retires in January.

Ryan, current head of the Budget Committee and senior member of the tax panel, is widely seen as the leading candidate to become chairman of the committee. But he said it was a “little premature” to discuss committee moves before the current Congress wraps up.

Still, Ryan was willing to wade into some sticky tax issues. He said he did not think lawmakers should try to place a cap on the charitable tax deduction, but backed a Camp plan that would limit the mortgage interest deduction to loans up to $500,000.

“I thought that made a lot of sense, because it’s for middle-class people,” he said.