House Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanKenosha will be a good bellwether in 2020 At indoor rally, Pence says election runs through Wisconsin Juan Williams: Breaking down the debates MORE (R-Wis.) acknowledged Friday that entitlement reform isn't likely to happen in 2018.

"I don't see us tackling it this year," Ryan said at an event in Wisconsin.

"You're going to have to find bipartisan consensus to fix these thorny, long-term problems, and we don't have that right now."

Ryan appears to be backing down for previous statements he's made about turning to entitlement reform in 2018.

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"We're going to have to back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and deficit," Ryan said in an interview in December.

Ryan said Friday entitlement reform is still necessary, but not politically feasible.

"The sooner we put reforms into these programs so they work better, so they're solvent and don't go bankrupt, the better off we're going to be," Ryan said.



"I think we should have a bipartisan conversation about how to do that, but that's clearly where the political system is today."

The Republicans' slim majority in the Senate shrunk even more, to 51-49, once Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) was sworn in this month.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellObama calls on Senate not to fill Ginsburg's vacancy until after election Planned Parenthood: 'The fate of our rights' depends on Ginsburg replacement Progressive group to spend M in ad campaign on Supreme Court vacancy MORE (R-Ky.) has also acknowledged that entitlement reform would be virtually impossible given the upper chamber's current makeup.

"I think Democrats are not going to be interested in entitlement reform, so I would not expect to see that on the agenda," McConnell said last month.

Updated at 1:32 p.m.