Speaker Ryan’s ‘Big Idea’
Here's how Speaker Ryan intends to live up to his own billing as the serious man with a serious plan: by attempting to ram through the same toxic, tired, special-interest policies that House Republicans have been pushing for decades. From POLITICO:
If Donald Trump is elected president and Republicans hold onto Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan is bluntly promising to ram a partisan agenda through Capitol Hill next year, with Obamacare repeal and trillion-dollar tax cuts likely at the top of the list…
Typically, party leaders offer at least the pretense of seeking bipartisanship when discussing their policy plans. But Ryan is saying frankly that Republicans would use budget reconciliation — a powerful procedural tool — to bypass Democrats entirely…
Republicans would…set about rewriting the tax code through budget reconciliation…
Trump and House Republicans have proposed different tax plans, but they are largely in sync on major principles. Both would cut the top tax rate for individuals to 33 percent from the current 39.6 percent. The corporate rate would drop to 15 percent under Trump's plan and 20 percent under the House GOP plan, from 35 percent today. Both plans also would drain federal coffers of several trillion dollars and give the biggest boost to the wealthy. By the end of the decade, the richest 1 percent would have accumulated 99.6 percent of the benefits of the House GOP plan, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
That's the Speaker's big idea? Repealing the Affordable Care Act and gift-wrapping massive, deficit-exploding tax cuts to the richest Americans? Those aren't exactly novel concepts for a House Republican Conference that has attempted to repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act 64 times, and whose trickle-down agenda ignited the financial crisis that shattered our economy.
As Speaker Ryan proudly vows to use a stealthy budgetary maneuver to force his partisan agenda, let's not forget what the Speaker has promised – and failed – to get done before. The Speaker and former Budget Committee Chairman couldn't even pass a budget this year, even after promising to do so early. From The Huffington Post:
John Boehner (R-Ohio) was able to get a budget done every year of his speakership. And that was during a period marked by internal House Republican dysfunction. Ryan came into the speakership with the promise that he would cure the bad blood in the Republican conference and usher in harmony, progress and regular order. Instead, the House slowed the budget and appropriations process from a legislative crawl to the shimmying of an overturned turtle trying to avoid death.
Despite his branding, the facts are clear: Speaker Ryan doesn't have any new ideas, and he has the same tired, trickle-down agenda Donald Trump is advocating.