Paul Ryan Is Making John Boehner Look Like a Legislative Genius
David Dayen, newrepublic.com: Paul Ryan Is Making John Boehner Look Like a Legislative Genius
bills are crashing because Ryan won’t do what made Boehner so unpopular among the Republican House caucus: cut deals with Democrats to pass legislation that Republican factions oppose. Boehner’s 2015 House actually found success through that kind of deal-making, with agreements on Medicare funding, highways, and education, to name a few. But Ryan isn’t forging coalitions for bills that have the support of the majority of the House, because doing so would anger the vocal minority on the right. Far from “making Congress work,” he’s decided to make it stall.
Congress was always going to be fairly invisible in 2016 anyway; it’s an election-year tradition. But the thing about emergencies and catastrophes is that they don’t check the electoral calendar before striking. Millions of American citizens at risk of fiscal ruin, disease, poisoning, or addiction cannot wait for another government to provide them aid. Ryan is failing the most basic test of governance because he’s afraid that hardcore, anti-government conservatives won’t like him for doing so. It’s enough to make you long for the stable functionality of Boehner’s tenure.