Speaker Ryan, House GOP 'Road to Ruin' Budget Collapses
House GOP to miss budget deadline amid divisions in caucus
House Republicans are departing Washington having missed a deadline to pass their long-stalled budget and not appearing to be trying very hard to revive it.
The budget failure, while embarrassing to House Speaker Paul Ryan, isn't stopping the once-dominant House and Senate Appropriations committees from commencing work on spending bills. But trouble on the House floor awaits, where only a handful of the measures seem sure to advance.
Many conservatives opposed the additional spending and are refusing to vote for a leadership-driven budget plan that endorses it. The GOP fiscal blueprint also recommends record spending cuts to meet its target of a balanced budget within 10 years, which means Democrats won't vote for it even though it endorses higher agency budgets for the upcoming fiscal year.
"The Ryan budget that has been proposed is the most devastating road-to-ruin budget in history," said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "And even that wasn't brutal enough for the radical forces that have taken control and dominate the House Republican caucus."
House Republicans are coming to a consensus on this year's budget bill: There won't be one.
GOP lawmakers are universally accepting that the party will blow past a budget deadline on Friday, and say voting on a budget at all this year is unlikely.
Ryan's budget hopes have been quashed by several dozen members of the House Freedom Caucus…
In 2013, Ryan was a vocal supporter of a "no budget, no pay" bill in the House, after the Senate missed its deadline. The House also approved the Require Presidential Leadership and No Deficit Act from Price, which aimed to shame President Obama for missing his budget deadline.
Blown Budget Deadline Shows Ryan's Got A Boehner-Sized Problem
Paul Ryan, the budget wunderkind who was elected speaker only after a united House GOP dragged him into the job, is finding himself in the exact same position as former House Speaker John Boehner: unable to find consensus in his conference.
Just months after being elected as speaker with the promise he'd return the House to what is called "regular order," Ryan will miss an April 15 deadline to pass a budget even as he still seeks to find consensus around one.
Ryan still has the same hard job of uniting a conference that is deeply divided on just about everything. Ryan's hold up on the budget comes from the freedom caucus, the same ragtag group of conservatives who were a thorn in Boehner's side and ultimately pushed him toward resignation.
…Boehner's absence doesn't make the job of speaker any easier.
The House will miss a Friday deadline for adopting its annual budget resolution due to an intra-party fight, delivering a blow to Speaker Paul D. Ryan who pledged to show this year that Republicans could smoothly handle the basic job of funding the government.
…it is an embarrassment for Ryan who came to prominence in Congress as chairman of the Budget Committee.
Congress is about to blow past a legally mandated budget deadline (yet again) and Ryan is powerless to stop it
…the House of Representatives will miss a legally mandated deadline to pass a budget resolution for the fiscal year 2017. It is yet one more remarkably unproductive day in a Congress…
Basically, we are all still stuck in the era of seat-of-your-pants governance at the federal level. Without either a lot of luck or better leaders than Paul Ryan, we're not getting out of it in the foreseeable future.
Paul Ryan falling far short of his own goals
Ryan, you'll recall, is the former chairman of the Budget Committee. In other words, House Republicans chose a Speaker who knows a thing or two about writing and passing budgets. It's ostensibly the Wisconsin congressman's specialty.
And yet, while John Boehner never missed a budget deadline during his tenure, Ryan is all but certain to miss his…
…they've apparently given up on the process altogether, conveniently forgetting how important they said it was in the recent past.
Speaker Ryan and the House Republican leadership failing to enact a budget and meet this crucial deadline is not only a major embarrassment, but powerful statement of the extremism of the Republican majority. Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi noted earlier today:
The collapse of the Republican budget proposal is a very serious statement of House Republicans' unfathomable radicalism and disdain for seniors, students and hard-working families.
But as GOP Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee said: under the dysfunctional Do-Nothing Republican Congress, "that's the way it is. C'est la vie."