Speaker Ryan's Plea for 'Unity' Falls on Deaf Ears

Just last week, Speaker Ryan was giving a speech at the Heritage Foundation, pleading for ‘unity' among the Republican ranks.  How much did it change the game?  By the looks of things, not so much.  In fact, House Republican extremist Members are hinting at the threat of another Republican Government Shutdown.

The Hill:

Paul Ryan is facing a series of hurdles as he tries to pass his first budget since becoming Speaker of the House.

Conservatives are revolting…

That RSC members…contemplating opposing the fiscal 2017 budget is giving the GOP leaders some serious heartburn, a leadership source said.

Some in the nearly 40-member House Freedom Caucus this week have warned leadership both privately and publicly that they won't get on board...

…if his GOP conference can't even rally behind a budget, it will derail that process and spur another government-funding crisis on Sept. 30, just weeks before the presidential election.

Washington Post:

The same group of conservatives that drove former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to resign amid a government spending fight last year are now threatening to rebel against the upcoming House Republican budget over $30 billion in spending that Boehner helped secure.  They want current Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wisc.) to back out of the last year's bipartisan agreement...

POLITICO:

The House Freedom Caucus has another budget fight on its hands.

Conservative lawmakers are…enraged…

"If we don't do something dramatically different we're going to end up with the same result," said South Carolina Republican Rep. Mick Mulvaney. "That's not good for anybody, most specifically Mr. Ryan."

The 2017 fiscal-year budget will be a hurdle for House Republican leaders.

And today, Americans learned that Heritage Action – a far-right group highly influential in the Republican Government Shutdown of 2013 – is bound to cause severe headaches among Congressional Republicans after issuing a stark, heavy demand to Speaker Ryan:

The Hill:

Outside conservatives are pushing Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to throw out the budget deal hammered out by his predecessor just a few months ago.

Heritage Action, the political arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Tuesday it was incumbent on GOP congressional leaders to cut deeper and push President Obama harder.

"The elevated…funding level has no business being in a conservative Republican budget blueprint," the group said in a public memo.  "There is absolutely no conservative reason to support a Republican budget at spending levels dictated by Barack Obama and congressional Democrats."

[Ryan] is under pressure to come up with a plan that likely cannot count on Democratic support.

And Heritage also issued a warning note to conservatives considering trading a budget vote for another policy priority down the road.  The group argued that there is no way to guarantee those promises come to fruition.

It's as if Speaker Ryan remarks were given in front of a brick wall.  Nothing about the internal state of House GOP affairs reflect his call for oneness – at best, it proves the same dysfunction, distraction and obstruction that's dominated the rancorous Conference.