“I come from the conservative movement, and the people who have been lifelong members of the conservative movement know me as one of their own”, Ryan said.
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Some tax cuts were added into the spending bill, too, as a way to attract GOP votes. “At the last minute nobody announced that they were going to slip into the omnibus spending bill an additional 198,000 H2B visas”.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a Freedom Caucus member whose motion seeking Boehner’s removal from the speaker’s chair helped prompt the Ohio Republican’s decision to retire, said he was beginning to hear rumblings of dissatisfaction from his congressional district with Ryan’s stewardship.
“I can tell you that I’ve had more meaningful conversations with the speaker and leadership in the last couple of weeks than I think I have in the last couple of years”, Meadows said. “And it makes everyone swallow bad news a little bit easier”.
“Sadly, this bill does not adequately address the security issue, nor does it have the common sense, widely supported pro-life riders that we discussed”, he said, in a statement, also referring to a Republican proposal to defund Planned Parenthood.
“Absolutely not”, said Stan Collender, a budget expert. Ninety-five Republicans and 18 Democrats voted no. It’s only a temporary truce because of common interests at this moment.
Heritage said, while the bill fails to achieve significant conservative policy victories, it appears to deliver substantial liberal priorities, including a two-year delay of Obamacare’s Cadillac tax.
The spending and tax-break plan still awaits votes in the House and Senate and is no model of conservative legislation. Together, the two bills would keep $680 billion from tax coffers over 10 years.
The $1.1 trillion spending bill lifted the 40-year-old ban on USA oil exports, though conservatives grumbled that it unraveled the budget gains Republicans won during the previous four years without winning any of the restrictions they wanted to impose on President Obama. How does Ryan’s first experience stack up his predecessor’s?
After soaring budget deficits in the early years of the Obama administration, including a $1.4 trillion federal deficit in 2009 at the end of the Great Recession, Congress adopted measures to rein in spending and deficits began to drop.
“This is a very old-fashioned, circa 1960s or 1970s budget bill”.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) has been one of the most outspoken Republicans calling for his colleagues to support bills in order to increase the GOP’s negotiating power. “It’s a big change for the Republican Party”.
They are also both policy wonks and savvy politicians – savvy enough to speak well of the other during negotiations, keeping their criticism focused on policy instead of making it personal.
“The process has been good. Restore a more open process, a more deliberative process and a more participatory process”.
But Ryan might want to be careful not to get ahead of himself. That promise has given him credibility, at least for now, with the insurgent wing of the caucus that toppled Boehner.
Soon after, however, Senate leaders locked in an agreement to vote on the year-end package Friday if it passes the House. The move reflects Ryan’s appeal to Republicans to shift “from being an opposition party to being a proposition party”.
“This is good legislation”, Reid said on the Senate floor.
“I think Paul is going to be the person inclined to not necessarily make deals but to be reasonable in his demands and try to get legislation passed”.
The real measure of congressional dysfunction is the fact that we have to go through this process at all, Reynolds said. And he has yet to find a solution (that we know of) to convince them to change their ways.
Ryan has already conceded that he won’t be able to reach agreement with Obama on a comprehensive overhaul of the USA tax code next year, his longtime top policy goal.
Many saw the measure as the best they could get, given it still must gain President Obama’s signature.
Ryan is probably playing the expectations game.
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“We owe people the right to decide if they want to stay on this path or not”, he said.
