Paul Ryan: We can't start on tax reform and infrastructure until spring

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday that Republican lawmakers will try to push through tax reform and infrastructure bills — two key policies for investors — in the spring after focusing on health care.

"It's just the way the budget works that we won't be able to get the ability to write our tax reform bill until our spring budget passes, and then we write that through the summer," Ryan said on "Fox and Friends."

He added that an infrastructure package "comes out of our spring budget, as well."

Hopes for corporate tax cuts and spending on infrastructure projects helped to power the stock market after President Donald Trump won the White House and Republicans kept control of both chambers of Congress in November. However, other issues like immigration and repeal of the Affordable Care Act have largely consumed Trump and GOP lawmakers in the early days of the new administration.

"We feel the need to rescue this system here and that's why we're going with health care first, that's the first budget. And then in the spring we're doing the second budget. That's where tax reform comes," Ryan said.

Trump and congressional Republicans have touted tax reform as key to their plan of boosting U.S. economic growth and job creation. Trump has called for slashing the corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent. Ryan's proposal calls for a 20 percent corporate rate.

Trump on the campaign trail also called for spending $1 trillion on infrastructure, part of his pledges to stimulate job creation in the Rust Belt. Democrats have already put forward an infrastructure proposal that they hope will bring Trump to the table.

Republicans have so far proven wary of adding to the national debt in an infrastructure plan, and Ryan hinted Thursday that he would want to take a different path than Democrats.

"Remember, this isn't a trillion dollars of taxpayer spending. This is, how do we leverage private sector dollars so we can leverage more private sector spending on infrastructure like pipelines and things like that? FAA reform, we have to overhaul the entire air traffic control system. That's a huge infrastructure piece with airports. That's all part of this," he said.