“The Challenge Of Being Paul Ryan”: He’s Been Anointed As A Savior, And Saviors Often Meet A Bad End
Paul Ryan had excellent reasons for not wanting to be speaker of the House. He’s a smart guy and knows that the Republican caucus he is about to lead is nearly ungovernable. He’s been anointed as a savior, and saviors often meet a bad end.
Moreover, the Wisconsin native (and ardent Packers fan) is still very much a work in progress. He was happy to stay away from the center stage as he mapped out the next steps of his life and the direction of his thinking. As chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, he could pick his fights and choose the issues he wanted to highlight. As speaker, the issues will often pick him and he may well have to wage battles he might prefer to avoid.
Ryan has always wanted to be several things at the same time, and they have not been easy to keep in balance.
On the one hand, he is, from my experience, a genuinely nice and warm person who wants to be seen as thoughtful, wonkish and willing to delve deeply into policy details. He’s a religious man who knows that his faith teaches the imperative of compassion and the urgency of justice. He has repeatedly given speeches declaring his determination to alleviate poverty.
But he is also an ideologue — one reason the right-wingers in the House could accept him as speaker. He has said that the unforgiving libertarianism of Ayn Rand — whose books include one called “The Virtue of Selfishness” — inspired him to enter politics. In a speech before the Heritage Foundation in 2011, he divided the world between “takers” and “makers” and spoke of government programs as creating “a hammock that ends up lulling people into lives of dependency and complacency.” I doubt that poor people think they spend their lives swaying gently between the trees.
The budgets he has proposed over the years are his signature. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal group that is very careful about its numbers, repeatedly found that roughly two-thirds of the cuts in Ryan’s budgets came from programs for low- and moderate-income people. Take that, you takers!
Had Ryan not been pushed toward the speakership, he would have more room to refine his views and would not face constant pressure to appease the right. That pressure led him to criticize the process that outgoing Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) used to save Ryan from having to deal with impossible problems around the budget and the debt ceiling. Being Paul Ryan has just gotten even harder.
But let’s give Ryan a brief respite by focusing on his virtues. When he insisted that he would not take the speaker’s job unless he could protect his “family time,” he showed what kind of person he is and made a statement that could transform the debate about work and family.
I personally identify with Ryan because we were both 16 when our dads died and, like him, I have three kids. Time with my family has been a treasure for me, too. Good for Ryan for placing his family at the heart of his life.
Yet his statement brought him immediate and sharp criticism because he had voted against mandatory paid family leave. Rather than resenting his critics, he should take them very seriously by admitting that he enjoys a degree of bargaining power that so many Americans lack. And he should not pretend that the “flex time” proposals he has endorsed are the answer. They would merely undermine employees’ existing rights to overtime.
Ryan might take a look at a 2006 essay in the Weekly Standard by Yuval Levin, a conservative thinker I am sure he admires, acknowledging the tension between the market and the family. Levin noted that the market “values risk-taking and creative destruction that can be very bad for family life” and that “the libertarian and the traditionalist are not natural allies.”
Sometimes, despite what Ayn Rand says, government action is essential to preserving individual rights in the marketplace and protecting the integrity of family life. Many families are under severe economic pressures. There are times when only government is in a position to relieve them, often through the programs Ryan would cut.
Thus a hope: Ryan could use the first days of his speakership to signal his intention of bridging at least some of the great ideological gaps in our country. A man who so honorably values his own family could start by changing his mind on family leave.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 28, 2015
“For Better Or Worse, You Be The Judge”: Speaker Paul Ryan Is The Tea Party’s Greatest Triumph
People of all political convictions should be excited about Paul Ryan’s assumption of the House speaker’s gavel. Even if you disagree with Ryan’s fiscally conservative politics, you have to admit that the Wisconsin congressman is smart, focused on policy, and generally an honest broker. Regardless of your political affiliation, we should all be happy when the political process puts someone of this caliber in such an important job.
Which raises the question: How did we get such a good speaker?
The short answer is this: Credit the Tea Party.
Without the Tea Party, you wouldn’t have the House Freedom Caucus, made up mostly of rambunctious, hardcore, conservative back-benchers. Without the rabble-rousing Freedom Caucus, John Boehner probably wouldn’t have been driven to resign, and Kevin McCarthy probably wouldn’t have been driven out of the speakership race. Paul Ryan is not exactly a Tea Party firebrand. But he is still highly respected within the Tea Party. And they paved the way to his speakership.
For all of the bleating in opinion columns about the supposed anti-intellectualism of the Tea Party, Ryan’s policy seriousness is very much part of his movement appeal. Tea Partiers (and I count myself among them) are serious about reforming government, and a great many of them actually do understand that you need a serious plan to get it done, not just theatrics. People in the Tea Party also know they’re often disdained as simpletons by elites on both sides of the aisle, and so they very much respect credentialed people who they feel are part of their camp. This is at least partly why the Tea Party likes Ted Cruz (former Supreme Court clerk!) and Ben Carson (former neurosurgeon!).
Another key: The conservative base feels betrayed by politicians they elect who then turn around to pass moderate policies, and they want to see credibility from politicians. The best way to assert credibility is by picking a fight on an unpopular issue. Paul Ryan first became a national figure because he took on entitlement reform, the third rail in U.S. politics. The Tea Party admires his bravery and honesty in sticking to his conservative principles, even when much of the American media and political establishment crush him for it.
I like John Boehner, but it’s clear that he is an insider politician with little taste for serious policy wonkery. He lacks the courage to put forward an ambitious entitlement reform plan on his own. And so it was with the previous Republican speakers of the House. The Tea Party-backed Speaker Ryan, on the other hand, is serious about conservative ideas, and bold in promoting them.
I point this out because this isn’t just true in the House. In general, the Tea Party has elevated a better class of politician. There’s Marco Rubio, who has put forward innovative plans on taxes, on higher education, on jobs with wage subsidies, and, at least until he got cold feet, was a leader on immigration reform (another third rail). There’s Rand Paul who, as a libertarian, is someone I don’t agree with on every issue, but certainly brings much-needed representation of that perspective in the Senate (along with the admirable libertarian Justin Amash in the House, who personally explains every single vote on his Facebook page). There’s Mike Lee who is quickly shaping up to be one of the most important policy leaders in the Senate, taking charge on everything from tax reform to criminal justice reform and even defeating the Big Government Egg Cartel in his spare time (bet you didn’t know that was a thing).
There have been a few Tea Party misfires, like Ted Cruz and that “I’m not a witch” lady, but seven years into the Tea Party, it is now clear that overall, the movement has brought to Washington a class of politicians that, whether you agree with them on the issues or not, are a refreshing improvement over their establishment predecessors.
That’s something everyone should celebrate. So keep it in mind next time you see another column about supposed Tea Party know-nothingism.
By: Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, The Week, October 29, 2015
“A Sheep In Sheep’s Clothing”: After The Third Republican Debate, Is Jeb Bush Finished?
Jeb Bush deserves headlines from Wednesday’s anarchic GOP debate, but not the good kind. Something like: “Is Bush Finished?”
The evening in Boulder, Colo., will be remembered for interruptions, non sequiturs, mangled facts and general chaos. But the most significant impact may have been to dramatically lengthen the odds that Bush, the dutiful scion, will follow his father and brother into the White House.
The key moment came fairly early in the debate when Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) — considered Bush’s biggest rival for consolidating the support of the GOP establishment — was asked about having missed so many Senate votes while out on the campaign trail. Rubio responded by attacking “the bias that exists in the American media today,” claiming there is a double standard and that Republicans are judged more harshly than Democrats.
Bush sallied forth. “I’m a constituent of the senator,” he said, “and I helped him and I expected that he would do constituent service, which means that he shows up to work.” In his characteristic look-here-old-boy sort of way, Bush told Rubio he should either perform his duties or “just resign and let someone else take the job.”
Rubio shot back that Bush never complained about all the votes missed in 2008 by Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), to whose campaign Bush has compared his own. Then Rubio gave his one-time mentor the back of his hand: “The only reason why you’re doing it now is because we’re running for the same position, and someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you.”
The crowd cheered. Bush made no retort. Rubio had made him appear, in Winston Churchill’s memorable phrase, “a sheep in sheep’s clothing.”
Bush had spent the past week trying to assure donors and supporters that he had the drive, desire and political skill to fight with no holds barred for the nomination. Wednesday’s performance was woefully unconvincing.
Rubio, by contrast, had his best outing thus far. He was sharp and aggressive throughout, deflecting any question he didn’t want to answer with a fresh round of media-bashing.
If I were a would-be Republican kingmaker of the establishment persuasion, I’d invite Rubio for lunch — and remind Bush of his recent declaration that there are “really cool things I could do other than sit around, be miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) was at the top of his game, showing he can be more clever and eloquent than Rubio in attacking perceived — or imagined — media bias. “This is not a cage match,” he pronounced. “And, you look at the questions — ‘Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?’ ‘Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?’ How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about?”
That peroration drew one of the night’s biggest ovations. But it came in response to a question about Cruz’s position on the budget deal between President Obama and outgoing House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). Somehow, that didn’t fit Cruz’s definition of substance?
The battle among Rubio, Cruz and Bush was amusing, but it was for primacy among also-rans. The two leaders — billionaire Donald Trump and Ben Carson — went unscathed, generally managing to stay out of the fray.
Not that Ohio Gov. John Kasich didn’t try to make their lack of experience an issue. Kasich opened the debate with a screed: “My great concern is that we are on the verge, perhaps, of picking someone who cannot do this job.” He went on to mention Carson’s proposal to replace Medicare and Trump’s vow to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants as examples of “fantasy.”
But nobody wanted to join Kasich in ganging up on the improbable front-runners. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was eager to get in on the blame-the-media action that seemed to be working so well for the others. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee seemed to want to show that he has found his missing sense of humor. Businesswoman Carly Fiorina pushed “play” on a recording of her previous debate performances. Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) was present.
Trump was brassy, Carson was serene. Neither said or did anything to dissuade their legions of followers. When pressed on glaring contradictions, they simply denied saying or proposing things they said and proposed. All the politicians are still playing second fiddle to a real estate mogul and a retired neurosurgeon who somehow have stolen the Republican Party.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 29, 2015
“Governing-By-Crisis Has Gotten Even Worse”: The Risk That America Will Default On Its Debts Is Now Higher Than Ever
It’s tempting to say that the upcoming need to increase the debt ceiling is another depressing iteration of the governing-by-crisis that we’ve gotten used to over the last five years since Republicans took control of the House. But it isn’t. It’s worse. The chaos that is the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives is about to have some very serious effects on the entire country.
Why is this crisis different from those that came before it? In all of the government shutdown/debt ceiling crises of the last five years, we knew how they would end: eventually, after putting up a show of fighting against that dastardly Obama administration, John Boehner would allow a vote on a bill to either fund the government or raise the debt ceiling, knowing that it would pass only with the votes of Democrats plus a few dozen Republicans sane enough to want to avoid catastrophe. The conservatives would cry “Betrayal!” but the crisis would be over.
But now even that may not be possible. Here’s the latest news from Politico this morning:
House GOP leaders initially planned to vote on a red-meat proposal Friday pitched by the Republican Study Committee to increase the debt ceiling while imposing new limits on executive-branch power. That measure stood no chance of passing the Senate, but would at least show effort.
Yet when House Majority Whip Steve Scalise’s (R-La.) team tested Republican support for the legislation, it fell far short of the needed 218 votes, and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) postponed any floor action.
Now, the U.S. government is 12 days from reaching the debt limit without a clear plan of what to do.
Boehner, McCarthy and other GOP leaders are refusing at this point to move ahead with a “clean” debt ceiling bill insisted on by President Barack Obama. Senior leadership aides said they couldn’t find the 30 Republican votes needed to join with all 188 Democrats to pass that proposal — a bleak indication of the current state of play.
So there aren’t even 30 Republicans in the House willing to keep the United States government from defaulting on its debts. How did we get here?
First, let’s establish some context, since it’s been a while since we had a debt ceiling crisis. For some idiosyncratic historical reasons, the United States has a statutory limit on how many bonds it can issue to pay for what Congress buys, meaning that after it passes a budget, Congress has to pass an extra bill allowing the government to pay for that budget (the only other industrialized country that has a debt ceiling is Denmark, which might dim Bernie Sanders’ affection for the place, though theirs is set so high it doesn’t become a political football). For almost a century, debt ceiling increases were an occasion for brief political theater, as members of the party out of power would make some floor speeches about the administration’s outrageous spending, and then the bill would pass extending the ceiling for a year or two, because even the most committed opponents of the administration weren’t so deranged as to actually want to risk the United States government defaulting on its debts. But that was before the Tea Party came to town.
If a new bill raising the ceiling doesn’t pass by November 3rd, we will default. The Obama administration, as it always has, insists upon a “clean” debt ceiling increase — just increase it, and then we can argue about our other policy disagreements without threatening the full faith and credit of the United States. Republicans, however, see this as a great opportunity for blackmail.
So why are we even more likely now to fail to pass an increase than we were when we had this same crisis in 2011, then again in 2013, then again in 2014? Look at what’s going on in the House. Conservatives there are feeling emboldened because they just got rid of John Boehner, as they had wanted to do for so long. They feel strong and empowered, so naturally they believe that this is a battle they can win, even if they’ve lost before. And they’ve upped their demands.
Now they want not just general budget cuts in exchange for raising the ceiling, but cuts specifically to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. That demand was contained in a document the House Freedom Caucus put out recently, and the conservative Republican Study Committee’s proposal would raise the ceiling in exchange for $3.8 billion in cuts to those programs over the next decade, along with a freeze on all regulations until Barack Obama leaves office. If they think Democrats would ever accept those terms, they’ve lost their minds. But they seem serious.
But it isn’t just this recent revolt. As Jackie Calmes and David Herszenhorn of the New York Times recently pointed out, today’s House is even more conservative than it was when we came so close to defaulting before:
The legislative math has only grown more difficult. When Congress last voted in February 2014 to suspend the debt limit, 28 House Republicans joined nearly all Democrats in support; 199 Republicans were opposed. Now there are fewer Democrats in the House and if all 188 of them voted for an increase, Republican leaders would need 30 votes from their side for a 218-vote majority — two more than last year.
Yet nine of last year’s 28 Republican supporters have left Congress and at least three of their Republican successors — Representatives Dave Brat of Virginia, Steve Knight of California and Mark Walker, Republican of North Carolina — are almost certain to be opposed.
Also, 14 Democrats who voted to increase the debt limit are gone, replaced by Republicans, some of whom are likely to vote no.
That’s why they can’t even find 30 Republicans to vote for a clean increase. Then there’s the question of the next Speaker, who will be the one actually shepherding this crisis if Republicans stick to their schedule of electing the new Speaker next week. While Paul Ryan hasn’t said publicly what he thinks ought to be done, he voted against the increase last year. This topic surely came up when he went to the Freedom Caucus to win their support. What did he tell them? They fervently want to use the threat of default to extort the administration into satisfying some of their policy goals. Is one of Ryan’s first acts a Speaker going to be turning his back on them? Don’t bet on it.
All this suggests that every force involved is propelling Republicans not just toward forcing a crisis, but forcing an actual default. At some point, they might realize that “Republicans are holding a gun to the head of the American economy and they’ll fire unless we let them slash Social Security and Medicare” isn’t exactly a winning political message to send. But who knows how much damage will be done before they realize that?
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, October 23, 2015
“The Self-Defeating GOP”: The Difference Between Trying To Actually Legislate And Simply Grandstanding
These days, there is never a dull moment in the Republican Party. Today, the House of Representatives voted to pass a bill that would repeal significant portions of the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature health care reform law. This time the repeal measures are packaged in a budget reconciliation bill, so named because it carries out instructions that were outlined in the budget resolution which passed Congress earlier this year.
Budget reconciliation bills are subject to special rules which allow for limited debate in the Senate and are thus able to pass that chamber with a simple majority rather than the 60 votes necessary to end a filibuster. Opponents of the health care law view the reconciliation bill as their first opportunity to move a bill targeting the Affordable Care Act through the Senate and on to the president’s desk. Although the president is expected to veto the measure, many Republicans feel the political exercise would be a symbolic victory.
However, not everyone in the Republican Party is happy with the legislation. The Hill reports that three Republican senators, Ted Cruz of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah, will oppose the bill because it only repeals parts of the Affordable Care Act and not the entire law. The authors of the reconciliation bill were limited in what they could include in the package by the rules of the reconciliation process in the Senate. With narrow margins in the Senate, the defection of the three Senators puts Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., perilously close to losing the vote altogether.
The three opposing senators have offered a plan to override the Senate parliamentarian and pass a more aggressive bill as the solution to the conundrum. As of this moment, it does not appear that their proposal has a lot of support.
The revolt over the reconciliation bill is illustrative of the overwhelming tension within the Republican Party. On the one hand is the segment of the party that wants to operate within the parameters of what is achievable, and on the other is the segment of the party that wants to adhere to strict conservative principles no matter what. It’s the difference between trying to actually legislate and simply grandstanding.
The commitment of Cruz and his followers to their talking points regarding full repeal is so blind they don’t even realize they are trying to nullify Senate rules just a few weeks after the conservative House Freedom Caucus managed to force out Speaker John Boehner for his supposed disregard of the House rules. The current party dust up is even more striking because it is over a bill that never has a chance to become law to begin with. As Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., told The Hill, “It’s a pretend vote and people are upset because it doesn’t pretend enough.”
The conflict is not serving the party well. Never mind trying to keep the government open or negotiate a budget deal. It appears that even symbolic political achievements – in this case a standoff with the president – are now at risk. If this keeps up, Democrats won’t have to do anything. They’ll be able to stand back and watch the Republican Party defeat itself.
By: Cary Gibson, Thomas Jefferson Street Blog, U. S. News and World Report, October 23, 2105
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