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 The nomination puts the Wisconsin congressman and 2012 Republican
vice presidential candidate on track to replace retiring Speaker
John Boehner on Thursday, marking a transition to a potentially more
conservative House leadership stance.
"Our party has lost its vision and we're going to replace it with a
vision," Ryan told reporters after the vote.
The House later voted 266-167 to pass a two-year budget deal
negotiated by Boehner, the White House and other congressional
leaders that clears the decks for the new speaker and relieves
market worries over a possible default next week.
The plan extends the federal debt limit through March 2017 and eases
automatic spending caps to add $80 billion in new discretionary
spending over two years.
 A provision to cut crop insurance subsidies by $3 billion to help
pay for the deal was removed from the bill at the last minute,
according to House Agriculture Committee Chairman Michael Conaway.
Farm-state lawmakers had objected to the cut.
Supported by Ryan, the deal won only 79 Republican votes, and was
carried by votes from 187 Democrats. Ryan has pledged that he will
not bring future legislation to the floor unless it can win the
support of a majority of the 247 House Republicans.
The budget deal now moves to the Senate, where some conservatives
have vowed to try to block its progress with procedural hurdles.
If passed by the Senate, Ryan's first major task as speaker will be
to implement the budget plan with a major multi-agency spending bill
needed by Dec. 11.
In the closed-door speaker nomination contest, Ryan won 200 votes to
Representative Daniel Webster's 43. This was short of the 218 needed
for election in Thursday's House vote but some conservative Webster
supporters said they would switch their votes to Ryan.
Ryan's nomination caps weeks of turmoil as Republicans have
struggled to unite behind a replacement for Boehner, who is expected
to retire from Congress on Friday.
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Ryan has never served in House leadership, but heads the tax-writing
Ways and Means Committee and is widely respected among conservative
Republicans for his budget plans. These have proposed deep cuts to
social safety net programs and the effective privatization of
Medicare coverage for seniors.
As speaker, he would be next in line to the U.S. presidency after
the vice president.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said she had a "great deal of
respect" for Ryan despite their differences, because "he knows the
issues, he knows the rules."
Ryan said he wanted a more bottom-up approach to tackle fiscal
issues long before hitting deadlines such as the one to raise the
debt ceiling by Tuesday.
He told House Republicans on Wednesday morning he would not run the
House like a Roman emperor.
"I don't plan to be Caesar, calling all the shots around here," he
said, according to a lawmaker in the room.
(Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan and Richard Cowan; Editing by
Cynthia Osterman and Tom Brown)
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