Paul Ryan, having finally crumpled into endorsing Donald Trump, now has 21 days to prove he isn't totally worthless. That's how many working days are left before Congress goes on its August recess—which begins this year in mid-July, before the party conventions. They should be dealing with Puerto Rico, Zika, and passing spending bills to keep government open past September, but probably won't. Instead, they have to decide "whether to press ahead with the impeachment of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen" and set out an agenda for a potential Republican president that Trump is going to ignore, anyway.
To counter Democratic charges of a "do-nothing" Congress, Ryan and his top lieutenants—Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana—will spend the next three weeks unveiling recommendations from a half-dozen policy task forces they created earlier in the year. Ryan wants the policy prescriptions, which he calls the "Confident America" plan, to serve as a "rudder" to guide the GOP through the campaign, even with Trump as the nominee.
On Tuesday, Ryan will travel to a drug and alcohol rehab facility in Anacostia in Southeast D.C. to unveil the anti-poverty plank of the agenda. On Thursday, he and McCarthy will appear at the Council on Foreign Relations to talk about their national security program. Additional task force recommendations will cover taxes, health care, regulatory reform and "restoring constitutional authority," or the balance of power between the president and Congress. Republicans believe President Barack Obama has usurped too much of Congress' authority, while the president has argued that he acted when Congress couldn't.
“You will have a clear choice on poverty, jobs, taxes, security, health care and government itself. After decades of executive overreach, it is time we restore our Constitution,” Ryan said in a video released Friday. “That means we take control away from unelected bureaucrats and give it back to the people and their representatives so we are writing the laws that we live under.”
In other words, doubling down on proving just how irrelevant the House is under Republican leadership by continuing to run against President Obama, and doing nothing that will actually address any problem the nation is actually facing. And setting himself up for his own presidential runs in 2020 and/or 2024. Because even Paul Ryan can't believe that he's actually leading the House.