One day after President Barack Obama made his final State of the Union address, Paul Ryan – speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives – criticized the event by stating that “it was a fairly typical speech” for the Democratic occupant of the White House, who “glossed over the economy” as well as his “foreign-policy failures”.
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In the Senate, the focus will be on processing the 12 annual spending bills to fund government – a project Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged Thursday “is not going to titillate the public”.
“The speaker made an…” This could become a program adopted by their nominee and enacted into law next year – or at least help insulate individual Republican lawmakers running for re-election by providing them with their own agenda apart from their presidential nominee.
“This is not going to be the old way of doing things”, Mr. Scalise told reporters at the GOP’s start-of-year retreat at a Baltimore hotel.
Major votes often have a 15-minute time limit. McConnell is laser-focused on protecting vulnerable Republican incumbents in Ohio, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and IL, and has made clear that he will only take up pieces of the House agenda insofar as it helps those lawmakers. But Hill Republicans are also contending with the fact that the GOP could end up with a general election candidate – like Sen. They were participating in a debate Thursday night in SC. Ted Cruz or Donald Trump – who could reject any carefully laid plans for 2016. Publicly they parried questions on the issue as Ryan and others pledged to unite around the eventual nominee. “I respect the Republican primary voter”. “We ought to have a security test, not a religious test. That’s who we are”. House GOP leaders moved to “vacate” the vote, and got agreement from Democrats, many of whose members also missed the vote.
“I’ve tried to avoid turning the Senate into a studio for the presidential campaign, but it’s worth noting that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander”.
Polling shown to House members at an early gathering suggested Cruz could be even more problematic than Trump for down-ballot candidates. “But kind of wading into the primary politics of the other party is just not really what presidents ought to do”.
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“That’s not what presidents ought to be talking about in State of the Union addresses”, he explained.
