As recently as last summer, Ryan was one of the louder proponents among House Republicans for a broad reform effort, legislation for which has been stalled in the House since passing the Senate in 2012. Our Founding Fathers wisely left the purse strings in the hands of the House of Representatives because its members represent a much smaller number of people than do US senators. “And we fully expect that we are going to exercise that power”, Ryan said when pressed over whether he planned to attach so-called “policy riders” to a must-pass spending bill that Congress needs to approve before December 11.
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The new Speaker said that President Barack Obama can not be trusted after he went around Congress and took executive actions to stop the deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants, ABC News reported.
In 1996, notably, Democrats tied then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had presided over a series of government shutdowns the prior year, to Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole. “He was very unpopular, and I am not only certain that this did not help me, but that it also cost House seats that year”.
In a joint statement, Sen.
Ryan had initially said he didn’t want the job, saying the speakership is a job for an “empty nester” and his young children still need him. “That’s something I think would be clearly in his interest”. The good news is that he was one of Speaker Boehner’s sort of lieutenants in trying to round up votes for legislation past year to pass comprehensive immigration reform. He’ll have his challenges to do just that, with the December deadline looming and a contentious fight over a long-term highway bill that must be passed before Thanksgiving.
So are we to believe history as it occurred or the newly elected Speaker of the House? Political observers said that they early candidates would likely have met the same fate as Boehner, faced with controlling a fractious Republican majority in the House. “That is why we feel that we have an obligation to the hard-working citizens of this country to show them how we would do things differently to tackle our country’s problems before they tackle us and to get things fixed, to advance our principles, to show how we can make things better for people who are struggling in America”.
In an interview broadcast Sunday, Ryan said his colleagues need to be “realistic” about what can be accomplished with a Democratic president.
In one of the first decisions of the Steering Committee, Republicans will vote Wednesday to install either Reps. Kevin Brady of Texas or Pat Tiberi of OH as a successor to Ryan heading up the powerful tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) said, “Speaker Ryan is an outstanding public servant with a long record of service”. Ryan was a proponent of the stalled comprehensive immigration bill, and conservatives had been concerned that he would try to revive it as speaker.
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“It’s a test of leadership right off the bat”, said Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas. “We are asking members how they want to proceed going forward”. “That’s why I start out disappointed because increasing the spending and increasing spending caps is the wrong way to go”, Paul told CNN Tuesday afternoon.
