2016, c-spanpaign takes you on the road to the white house. we follow the candidates on c-span, c-span radio, and c-span.org. now, house speaker paul ryan, that's running mate in 2012, in briefing he discussed the republican presidential race and the fight between donald trump and mitt romney. this is the key minutes. -- 15 minutes. good morning, everybody.

yesterday, the foreign affairs committee passed two very important resolutions. one resolution by jeff fortenberry states that isis is committing genocide against christians and other religious minorities. by chrisresolution smith, that condemns the gross human rights violations of the aside regime, these are difficult subjects. that is why we need to take these steps, and in syria and iraq, christians are being executed. churches and holy sites being destroyed. children being as -- enslaved. the obama administration is still not ready to say that isis andy aside regime are committing crimes against humanity. we are. we are ready to say this. we need to recognize these atrocities with clear eyes. we need to continue to pray for the persecuted. second, the obama administration is in the final stages of preparing so-called fiduciary

role. this would raise costs and limit off -- absence for people seeking advice on a retirement plan. this could hurt millions of middle-class savers. we have already passed a bill in the house to delay this rule, and we have passed bills into committees laying out return -- alternatives. when the bill comes down, we will be ready to do what we can to protect savings of hard-working americans. when we do, help we will be joined by the dozens of democrats who have expressed concerns about these regulations. lastly, this afternoon, i will be attending cpac to talk about ideas for getting people out of poverty, and reclaiming the american ideal. this beautiful idea, this notion that the condition of your birth does not determine the outcome of your life. this is one of the planks of our policy agenda that we are working on right now. you can get all the details on this project at speaker.gov/ confident america. this is going to be our contribution to this campaign in 2016. a bold agenda, that unites

conservatives and gives the country a clear choice. with that in mind, i am going to freeze all candidates on our agenda. the goal is to have an election like we had in 1980, where we unite around old ideas and earn a mandate from the country, so we can get the country back on track. with that, i would be happy to answer your questions. >> have you had any conversations with governor romney about donald trump? he talked about an expectation that he could get along well with you. do you believe that would be true, if he was going to be elected? speaker ryan: that romney is one of our party leaders. he cares deeply about the future of the republican party and the country. i understand he will be giving a speech soon. i don't know the content. i read about it this morning, but i have not seen the content. mitt and i are very close to we talked about lots of things over the days and weeks, but i'm not

sure what he is going to say. he feels the need to speak out on behalf of the republican party. look at it this way. we are in the primary process. these are the kinds of things that have been a competitive republican primary. as speaker of the house, what control?about it or i can control us having an agenda. i can be involved in making sure house republicans unified to offer the country a very bold and specific path forward, and that is what i am focus on. that is what i am worrying about. as far as candidates, i will -- reach out each and every one of them as far as what we are doing in the agenda, and we will work with whoever the nominee is. it appears this will be an issue going into the campaign. what do you say to those who say, we disagree fundamentally with the republicans who are split down the middle?

[indiscernible] speaker ryan: you know we don't have a say, because we are the house. the president has every right to put a nominee up. the senate has every right not to consider a nominee. there is a president -- precedents involved. we are already halfway through a presidential election. i think it makes sense not acting on a nominee in the middle of the election season. i think we should let the people decide. the whole thing is up for grabs. thewhole thing meaning supreme court, congress, and the white house. let's give the people the choice. --speaker ryan speaker ryan: i was pointing at him, actually. >> cohead. -- go ahead. reporter: one of your relatives is reportedly being vetted for the supreme court nomination. you, at the time of her nomination to the federal court, saying -- you wrote a letter saying you support her.

ieaker ryan: i and/or her, love her. she is family. but my point is the same. which is, i said we should not be acting on a nominee for the very reason i just answered chad's question. regardless, my position is the same, as it always has been. that the senate has every right not to consider a nominee. i think the senate is right in making the decision that they've made. reporter: i know you say you want to keep your powder dry on this presidential election but you're seeing more and more republicans speaking out about donald trump. we had a response from mitt romney today. are you worried in any way that if you don't speak out against donald trump, that history may judge you, you could get blamed for not doing more at this point in history? speaker ryan: i don't worry about that, because i see my role as speaker of the house as a unique role. chairman of the convention is a unique role. here's what i can control. if i see episodes where conservatism is being disfigured, if i see ideas and comments that mislead the people as to who we are as republicans, i will speak out on those. i've done this twice already.

i just did it the other day on tuesday. so i'm going to do that when i see conservatism being disfigured. i'm going to speak out for who i am and what i believe and what we as house republicans believe and what conservatism is as we understand it. that is point number one. point number two, what can do i about this? well, i can help lead the house republicans to offer an agenda. i can help put substance in this campaign. the way we see our role in this campaign through our agenda project is to add a keel and rudder to this ship of the republican party, and give a direction, so that we can take the american people a real choice. this is what i wish we could have done better in 2012. give the country a very clear and compelling choice so that they get to decide which way we go as a nation. we think that people are stuck in poverty and we have to do something about it. we think this economy is flat and stale and people aren't getting raises and they're not getting good opportunities. we think obamacare's bust. we think it is going to bankrupt the country, and we need patient

centered health care. we think our military is under duress. we don't have a foreign policy to keep us safe. and we think the constitution's being ignored and we as elected representatives of the people are not actually writing our laws. we think a fourth branch of government, unelected bureaucrats, are effectively writing the laws of america so that the founding principle of this consent,governing by being a self determining people, is not at play here. we want to reclaim that. these are ideas. these are choices. this is what we can do to add value to the -- presidential campaign and congressional election. reporter: what confidence do you have that trump would embrace this agenda? speaker ryan: we will see when we have a nominee. reporter: on the same point, you always like to say that you're a policy guy. three of the policies your most associated with, trade, taxes, and entitlement reform -- donald trump takes pretty much the exact opposite position. he's anti-free trade, he wants to raise taxes and does not want

to do anything on entitlement reform. what good will your agenda be if he is the nominee? speaker ryan: we will speak out for who we are and what we believe. we will run on our beliefs and ideas. i will leave it at that. reporter: regarding the budget, you had a discussion about that this morning. i'm curious, do you have a timeline for when you are going to go and no go? and the summary, the full funding of base defense, i wonder if that means a change in the allocation or an additional $2 million on top of it? speaker ryan: i will do for you to the budget committee on debt levels. tom price is working with mac thornberry on that, our house chairman. conversation good in our conference this morning. it reminds me of the kind of conversations i led our conference through when i was running budgets. we are still on track and on schedule. remember, our deadline's not until april 15 for the budget resolution, so we still are a good month ahead of where we otherwise would be. i wanted to start this conversation early, because we are losing a couple of weeks in july. i want to get the process upfront, so we can consider all of our appropriation bills. we're still on track for that.

ultimately, this will be a decision made by our team. that is what i made out to the congress this morning. -- laid out to the congress this morning. the kind of speakership i'm going to have is not going to be the top-down, jam things down people's throat kind of speakership. this is going to be a bottom-up, we make decisions jointly as a team as the house republican conference. i fundamentally believe that we need to pass a budget, and we need to have a full functioning appropriations process. i laid that out to the members, why i think that. tom price has spent the last month listening to the members of our conference, working with the members of his committee, to put together a plan forward for how to get not only a good conservative legit and vision, but an act of the probe regions -- active appropriations process, but ultimately this is going to be up to the members of the conversation. reporter: in mid march? speaker ryan: i will leave that up to the budget committee. reporter: some conservatives are saying they don't support the plan that was laid out this morning. you said you're willing to put up bills on the floor that will go down. so can you commit that you're going to put a budget resolution

on the floor, regardless of whether their support for it? speaker ryan: i'm going to let our team decide that, again. i'm going to let the house republican team, our conference members, decide how we proceed on this. that's just how i think the kind of leadership style we need to have around here. reporter: what did you think of trump announcing that if you don't get along with him you'd pay a big price? what does a comment like that suggest? speaker ryan: i actually watched that live. i was sitting in my office, and i left out loud, i think. sometimes the reality is stranger than fiction around here the states i don't think anything of it. reporter: what does it suggest to you about the kind of partner he'd be to work with? speaker ryan: i don't really know him. we obviously will get to know each other if he gets the nomination. we'll cross that bridge when we get to. it i'm a good-natured guy so i get along with everybody. reporter: the f.a.a. funding, re-authorization running out -- speaker ryan: we will have to do an extension. the senate isn't as far down the path on f.a.a. re-authorization as the house. is an extension will be put together. we're working with the senate to

decide the duration of the extension. we don't have an answer on that one yet. reporter: we do know what mitt romney has said about donald trump. he just gave a speech. he called him a phony and a fraud. when you hear that from somebody from mitt romney, whom you respect a lot, he was here on a special day when you are elected. speaker ryan: yes, he is a good friend. reporter: does that make you want to, use your bully pulpit more? do you have an obligation to use your bully pulpit more to speak out against donald trump? speaker ryan: what i can control is what we do here as house republicans. i'm the speaker of the whole house, and the chairman of the convention. what i believe i can do to add value to this process, look, the republican primary is going to play itself out. these are the kind of things you're going to see in an increasingly competitive republican primary. what can do i as speaker of the house? i can help offer the country a choice. a vision. an agenda. that's what i'm focusing my time on. thank you very much. appreciate it.

[captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> involving f.b.i. director james comey on issues of privacy, national security and encryption. and then richard norton smith talks about the historical comparisons to what's happening in the 2016 presidential race. be sure to watch "washington journal" live at 7:00 a.m. eastern tomorrow morning. join the discussion. >> this weekend, the c-span's cities tour hosted by our time warner cables partner takes you to anaheim, california on book tv.

>> the idea came from my editor at the o.c. weekly. i wasn't offended by the idea but i didn't want to do it because i didn't think anyone would care in. journalism you want to do stories that people will care about. you don't care if people like you or hate you. and i got the idea who's going to want to read an advice columns about mexicans? but he kept on insists. he said it's only going to be one time. it's going to be a satirical column, totally jokey. some people loved it. some people hated it. but more importantly people were caring. at the very bottom of the column, i thought, hey, you have a spicy questions about mexicans? ask me, i'm the mexican. so people started sending in questions like crazy immediately. >> and on american history tv -- >> john free-throw lining and his partner go up to san

francisco which is -- john fro wling and his partner go to up to san francisco. they are able to convince 50 people of which whom nobody was a farmer and only one person had a background in wine-making to give up their businesses and come to anaheim. so their first action after they form what's known as the los angeles vineyard society was to hire george hansen to be their superintendent and his job was to bring the irrigation here, lay out the town site and plant hundreds of thousands of grapevines before the families would come down here. >> watch the c-span's city tour on book tv and sunday afternoon on american tv on c-span 3. visiting cities tour

stitts across the country. >> the annual conservative political action conference began today. the event at national harbor, maryland outside of washington, d.c. runs through saund will include appearances from all the republican presidential candidates. thursday's session included a discussion about different approaches to conservatism. we'll hear from former presidential candidate rick santorum. senator ben sass and governor gary johnson who's seeking the libertarian party's presidential nomination. his is 45 minutes. to get us started please welcome senator ted cruz, paul teller. ♪