House Speaker Paul Ryan, the supposedly reluctant water-carrier for Donald Trump has been under intense scrutiny since he stepped into the speakership and into the role as de facto leader of the Republican Party. But if you look closely under all the hype, Ryan is failing as badly as his predecessor John Boehner to make the place work. In fact, in some measures he's doing worse.
Republicans started off this year with headlines about happiness, with promises from leaders in both chambers that they were going to do their damnedest to pass all 12 appropriations bills and avoid the slapdash lawmaking that produces short-term spending extensions and all-encompassing omnibus bills at the end of the year. [...]
Ryan said the House would do a budget early this year and then start the appropriations process a month ahead of schedule.
But House Republicans never agreed to a budget―the Senate didn’t either, for that matter―and House lawmakers had a much later start on appropriations bills than usual. (By law, the House couldn’t advance a spending bill without a budget before May 15.)
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.
Boehner not only was able to get a budget done every year, he also got spending bills done—averaging six a year—and he did it with a more open amendment process. Ryan has had to clamp down on so-called “regular order” because of the ongoing rabble-rousing from the maniacs, the same people who ultimately wore down Boehner to the point he resigned. That amendment clamp-down hasn’t gone over so well with all the maniacs. “’Are you kidding me? Nothing has changed,’ one Freedom Caucus member told HuffPost last week. ‘Nothing.’”
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There’s plenty of rumblings still among the maniacs about bringing down Ryan, though some of them are feeling good that he pays attention to them. “’I talk to him regularly,’ Freedom Caucus member Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) said last week, ‘mostly about football.’” He seems mollified. Which tells you about how deeply some of these idiots care about their conservative principles and reforming the House. They talk football with the leader and all is forgiven.
Freedom Caucus aside, the remainder of the year is going to be a challenging one for Ryan, one that is likely to put some tarnish on his golden boy image. He says now that there won’t be one big omnibus spending bill to close out the year. But here the calendar and the existence of the Senate are working against him. The current continuing resolution (which he negotiated with Democrat Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell, the two people the maniacs hate almost as much as President Obama) runs out on December 9. The Congress comes back on November 14. There’s slim to no chance they get through seven individual spending bills in the House and Senate in those three weeks. An omnibus bill is almost an inevitability and an omnibus is the source of all evil as far as the Freedom Caucus is concerned.
Ryan is going to go into the next speaker election carrying almost as much baggage as Boehner. Possibly enough to make the Freedom Caucus take another run at a coup. The slim reed of Ryan’s leadership—and his carefully crafted image as the future of the GOP—might just snap under all that pressure.