RYAN TOWN HALL FACT CHECK: The Truth About Speaker Ryan's Budget Failure

July 13, 2016
Blog Post
The former chairman of the House Budget Committee, Speaker Ryan is trying his best to distract from his embarrassing failure to pass a budget.  Speaker Ryan's new excuse on CNN is to blame his budget failure on the bipartisan budget agreement of 2015, saying, "with respect to the budget, we passed a two-year budget deal a year ago, so we are in the second year of that two-year budget deal.  That is why we weren't able to pass a new budget" – but here are the real facts about how Speaker Ryan couldn't craft a budget extreme enough for his radical Conference:

THE TRUTH ABOUT SPEAKER RYAN'S BUDGET FAILURE

  • Speaker Ryan said not passing a budget would be a "historic failure."  Speaker Ryan: Failing to enact a budget is "a historic failure to fulfill one of the most basic responsibilities of governing."  And, punting the budget "is not leadership, that's an abdication of leadership." [CBS, 2/15/11]

  • Speaker Ryan promised to pass a budget "early" this year. "We're doing a budget early this year, at least a month early," Ryan said. [MNI News, 1/14/16]

  • Speaker Ryan and House Republican Leaders proposed the most radical ‘Road to Ruin' budget in history.  Speaker Ryan's proposed budget included "the sharpest cuts ever proposed by the [Budget] committee" [The Hill, 3/15/16].

  • But Speaker Ryan completely failed to pass a budget, unable to satisfy the radical forces in control of his Conference.  Speaker Ryan's "most basic legislative agenda — getting a budget and spending bills passed — has failed, killed off by his right flank." [New York Times, 7/12/16]

  • Since their budget failure, House Republicans sunk their own appropriations bill because it was insufficiently bigoted against LGBT Americans. "House conservatives…blocked passage of a relatively uncontroversial energy and water spending measure after Democrats attached an amendment that would bar federal contractors from discriminating against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people." [POLITICO, 5/26/16]