Challenges loom large for new House Speaker Ryan

John Boehner had a few busy weeks at the end of his tenure as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, pushing through a number of important pieces of legislation, most notably the budget bill.

The House also voted to reopen the federal Export-Import Bank and approved a stopgap bill to fund transportation programs.

The Dayton Republican then declared his work done and turned over the gavel to Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. At 45, Ryan is the youngest person to hold the office in 150 years.

He’ll need all the energy of that youth and the wisdom of the ages if he is to meet the goal he has set for himself – to rebuild what he has described as a broken institution.

He already has said he has no intention of tackling immigration reform. He chose to frame the decision in a way that is least flattering toward President Barack Obama – he said the president can’t be trusted on the issue. But he already had pledged to the conservative Freedom Caucus that he would not bring an immigration bill to the floor unless it had the support of a majority of House Republicans. It was the price he had to pay to win the support for his candidacy from tea-party members of the caucus.

In accepting the speakership, Ryan proclaimed that the House can’t keep doing business the way it has. That’s true enough.

But in invoking the Hastert Rule on an important issue even before he was elected, he’s sending a contrary message. Named for former Speaker Dennis Hastert, the rule states that no legislation should make it from a committee to the House floor unless it has the support of a majority of House Republicans.

It is the antithesis of bipartisanship. It gives a minority of the House – perhaps as few as 26 percent – a pre-emptive veto of a bill, no matter how important the legislation might be to the nation. Even in the Senate, where the threat of a filibuster has been abused by dissenting minorities, it takes an opposition vote of 41 percent to block legislation.

This “majority of the majority” standard has been used by speakers of both parties. But the two most recent speakers, Boehner and Democrat Nancy Pelosi, recognized that some legislation was important enough to bring to a floor vote even if a majority of their own parties opposed it.

Indeed, Boehner broke the Hastert Rule to bring the budget bill to the floor.

The budget deal, which quickly won Senate approval and was sent to President Obama, will increase federal spending by $80 billion over the next two years and will avoid a default on the federal debt that the Treasury Department said could occur within days. It includes changes to Social Security disability programs, Medicare payments to health care providers and increases for the Pentagon and State Department.

VALUE OF COMPROMISE

By almost any definition, it’s a compromise. While Boehner backed the bill, 167 of the House’s 247 Republicans voted against it. It passed with the votes of all 187 Democrats and 79 Republicans.

One of those 79 Republicans was Ryan, who said: “As with any budget agreement, this one has some good, some bad, and some ugly. What I’ve heard from members over the last two weeks is a desire to wipe the slate clean, put in place a process that builds trust, and start focusing on big ideas. What has been produced will go a long way toward relieving the uncertainty hanging over us, and that’s why I intend to support it.”

Ryan had the luxury of giving the bipartisan budget deal his endorsement while still just another member of the House. Whether he reaches across the aisle to work with Democrats in the House, the Senate and the White House now that he is the speaker will determine whether he can achieve his goal of turning a dysfunctional House of Representatives into an institution that puts the welfare of the American people above partisanship

That task is more difficult today than at any time in modern history, given the polarized landscape. Gerrymandering has distorted what was envisioned by the founders as the “People’s House.” Too many of the 435 members of the House now answer to constituencies that are so solidly Republican or Democratic that they are afraid to pursue bipartisan solutions.

Ryan says House Republicans need a bold, specific agenda and that he wants to find common ground without compromising principals. He also says that working families are falling behind and that poverty is increasing. As he seeks solutions to those and other problems, he would do well to remember that the erosion of middle-class earnings, the challenges of finding affordable health care and rampant poverty have been decades – not years – in the making. And that both Democratic and Republican politicians have contributed to those problems in what they have done and in what they have failed to do.