Paul Ryan and Obama Ryan

White House: Obama and Ryan planned a private lunch following a joint meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose focus this year is largely on protecting vulnerable Republicans and keeping the Senate in GOP hands come November, according to MSNBC. As Ryan swept into the speakership in October, the White House was cautiously optimistic that the policy-minded Republican, given a powerful mandate by his unruly caucus, might be able to work with Obama in 2016 on a narrow set of issues with some bipartisan overlap. Obama meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday is his first since the Wisconsin Republican took the helm more than three months ago, the long delay illustrating the lack of urgency for Obama in engaging with a Congress clearly resolved to wait him out. Although Obama has scaled back his legislative ambitions from the sweeping proposals he pushed earlier in his presidency, he still needs Congress to help finish what he started in certain areas — trade being chief among them. Just as Ryan and McConnell were heading to the White House, the Republicans and Democrats running to replace Obama were shuttling from Iowa to New Hampshire for the next step in a presidential primary that now the dominant force in the political conversation. But with campaign season in full bloom, enticing Republicans to work with Obama on much of anything is becoming an increasingly arduous task, especially as many lawmakers facing competitive primaries seek to avoid votes that conservative challengers could use against them. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.