Unaired clips from Paul Ryan's 60 Minutes interview
On 60 Minutes this week, House Speaker Paul Ryan talks to Scott Pelley about how he hopes to unite his fractured party and work with President Obama and the Democrats on areas of common interest.
In the video above, an unaired clip from the interview, Pelley also asks Ryan about the 2016 presidential race, and whether he regrets not throwing his hat in the ring.
"You know, a lot of Republicans are looking on the party with dismay," Pelley says. "Fourteen presidential candidates. It looks like a party that can't govern even itself."
Ryan sees it differently. "Fourteen candidates means we have 14 able-bodied people running for president in a competition, in a battle of ideas, to try and compete among each other to have the honor of representing our party," he says. "I think that's a good process."
As for whether he regrets not running, he says he doesn't look back. "This was not the right stage and phase in life for me, particularly with our family," he says. "And I like doing what I'm doing right now."
Pelley also asks the speaker whether he plans to introduce any gun legislation in the months ahead. "I haven't given any thought to that," Ryan says.
But, Ryan adds, he does support pending legislation that would overhaul the country's approach to mental illness, a component of gun violence. The bill he cites was introduced by Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., a psychologist. It would, among other things, make it easier for family members to get information about the mental health of their loved ones, and increase the number of beds in psychiatric hospitals.
In another unaired clip (below), Speaker Ryan tells Scott Pelley how former Speaker John Boehner convinced him to take the job, one Ryan initially didn't want.
"He laid on a lot of Catholic guilt," Ryan says. "He basically said that I had to do this, that I was the only person who could step up and unify this conference."
Ryan was also reluctant to spend too much time away from his young family. With three school-age children, he says, he wanted to stay close to his Janesville, Wisconsin, home on weekends. But when he learned he could redesign the job to allow that, Ryan softened his stance.
"Once I realized I could do that, and talking it through with John and others," he says, "I basically came to the conclusion that I had an obligation and a duty to do it."