Reviews on Speaker Ryan's 'Big Speech': A Distraction From the Do-Nothing GOP Congress
The reviews on Speaker Ryan's latest attempt to conceal the rampant House GOP dysfunction with a 'big speech' are in:
What should we make of House Speaker Paul Ryan's speech in the Capitol on Wednesday? Ryan…devoted most of his remarks not to policy but to politics.
...The House is about to leave for recess with no apparent progress on meeting an April 15 deadline for approving a federal budget.
….Ryan leads a party that's trapped, especially in the House, in precisely the kind of ideological lockdown he describes. One small but telling example: Republicans broke longstanding tradition and prohibited the White House budget director from testifying on the administration's annual budget request.
…what Mr. Ryan did not address in his speech has been the inability of Congress to turn…ideas into laws, even with Republican majorities in both houses, or to maintain much decorum in its own chambers.
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When Republicans seized control of the Senate last year, they promised they had finally achieved the latitude they needed to act big: to rewrite and simplify the tax code to unleash economic growth, replace the health care law with "patient-centered" care, overhaul the criminal justice system, expand free trade and put the government on a path to a balanced budget.
Instead…Republicans find themselves unable to even cobble together a budget...
But the House's failure to legislate has given Democrats another line of attack on the man who would carry that torch.
"The ‘do-nothing' Republican Congress is leaving town today for two weeks without taking action on a budget, and without addressing the three major public health crises of Zika, opioid addiction and the Flint water crisis," said Drew Hammill, the spokesman for Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader. "Speaker Ryan can talk all he wants, but the total failure of the Republican Congress speaks louder than anything."
…Ryan spoke Wednesday of the need to "raise our gaze and aim for a brighter horizon. Instead of talking about what politics is today, I want to talk about what politics can be." But while Ryan gazes, his party — and his country — burn.
…Ryan failed to acknowledge that the Republican Party has for years pushed bills in Congress that advance similar views and helped create a space for the current election tenor.
Republicans in the House, for instance, introduced legislation suggesting that President Obama wasn't born in America…
It was perversely appropriate for Paul Ryan to deliver this speech…on March 23: the six-year anniversary of President Obama signing the Affordable Care Act into law. The Republican response to the ACA's passage has been to scare people…and to oppose it without offering an alternative...
Ryan's comments yesterday were an implicit rebuke of the course he and the Republican leadership pursued from the moment Barack Obama first took the oath of office. Ryan, of course, wasn't so bold or honest to actually state outright that this political dynamic he laments was the product of his party's deliberate strategy…
The Speaker's remarks yesterday called for a rhetorical, not a substantive, shift. In other words, Ryan still wants the same agenda, shaped by his "makers/takers" assumptions, but he'd like us all to be nicer while debating it.
The Republican leader wants American politics to change, but only in superficial ways. He and his party still want the same regressive policies they've pushed for years, but Ryan sees value in doing so with respect and without insults. It's a message predicated on the assumption that a far-right agenda might be more palatable if GOP officials presented it more politely.
On a daily basis, Americans have seen how the Do-Nothing GOP Congress has failed them. If Speaker Ryan wants to make a difference in ending the raving dysfunction that has seized control of the GOP – he should join House Democrats in working to address the public health emergencies before our nation, increase the paychecks of hard-working American families, and pass a budget to improve our country's crumbling infrastructure.