GOP nominates Ryan; House passes budget

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

House Republicans embraced a new leader Wednesday and swiftly consented to a major budget-and-debt deal to avert a federal financial crisis, highlights of a day of dramatic fresh starts at the Capitol after years of division and disarray.

Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the 2012 GOP vice presidential candidate and a telegenic spokesman for conservative priorities, was nominated by his colleagues in a secret-ballot election to serve as speaker of the House, second in line to the presidency. The full House will confirm that choice today.

“This begins a new day in the House of Representatives,” Ryan, 45, said after the vote. “We are turning the page.”

Immediately after choosing Ryan to chart a new course for their fractured party, Republicans trooped onto the House floor to cast votes on a huge two-year budget deal struck in recent days between President Barack Obama and congressional leaders of both parties.

The agreement, approved 266-167, would raise the government’s borrowing limit through March of 2017, averting an unprecedented default just days away. It also would set the budget of the federal government for the next two years, lifting onerous spending caps and steering away from the brinkmanship and shutdown threats that have haunted Congress for years.

Most of the “no” votes were from Republicans, but 79 GOP lawmakers voted for approval.

“A solid piece of legislation,” declared outgoing Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, who played a key role in engineering the accord after announcing his resignation last month following a quarter-century in Congress and nearly five years in the speaker’s chair. Boehner was beset by intractable divisions between the party’s pragmatists and purists, but those will now be Ryan’s to resolve.

Ryan sounded an optimistic note.

“We are not going to have a House that looks like it looked the last two years,” he said. “We are going to move forward; we are going to unify. Our party has lost its vision, and we are going to replace it with a vision.”

Earlier, inside the ornate Ways and Means Committee room where the vote occurred, Ryan asked lawmakers to pray for him, and pray for each other.

He easily dispatched his sole opponent, Florida Rep. Daniel Webster, the choice of a group of hard-core conservatives, winning 200 votes to Webster’s 43. He still must prevail in a vote of the full House today, when Democrats will have a say, too, and will back the minority leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California.