By Frank Schultz

Excerpt:

Paul Ryan and Barack Obama don't see eye-to-eye, but when they talked about their deeply held beliefs last week, it gave Ryan a glimmer of hope they might reach a compromise.

Ryan, the 1st District congressman who ran with Mitt Romney to unseat the president last fall, told The Gazette in a phone interview Tuesday that he thinks the president understands the need to control the costs of enormously expensive entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Ryan said it was the first time that he and Obama had an extensive exchange of views about that.

"I'm not sure he's heard those arguments, at least not like I put them," Ryan said.

"And I think it was very constructive for us to give each other our very candid perspectives. That's a necessary beginning if you're going to find common ground, so I came away from that lunch thinking that at least we're starting by better understanding each other's positions, and, you know, we'll see where it goes from here," Ryan said.

Ryan said he feels more optimistic this year about a budget compromise that could end the crisis-to-crisis management of the budget. That's because the Democrat-controlled Senate is putting out its own budget document for the first time in four years.

"That means the process continues past just me passing a budget, which keeps open the possibility that we could get something done," Ryan said.

Read the full story at the Janesville Gazette.