Paul Ryan, 54th Speaker of the House Of Representatives, is throwing in the towel at the end of this Congressional term. He cites spending more time with his family as his reason for leaving. His departure is accompanied by similar announcements from more than 30 other Republicans in both the House and Senate. Ryan told reporters that he was "proud of what this Congress has achieved".Trump twitted that Ryan was "a truly good man" who "would leave a legacy of achievement that nobody could question". Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told us that Ryan was "a good man who is always true to his word" and said he'd "always found him to be smart, thoughtful and straightforward". Others praised Ryan the man and most didn't speculate on why Ryan might be leaving at what E. J. Dionne, Washington Post opinion writer calls "a low, dishonest political moment".
Since the Washington establishment has worked together for many years and I've never been inside that well known group, they probably see Ryan's departure far differently from many outsiders, including myself. I tend to believe that the toxic environment in Washington created by the Trump Administration is part of the reason so many politicians are leaving at this particular time. Ryan's belief in Ayn Rand's philosophy makes him identify with society's winners and regard ordinary citizens as moochers and burdens on the creative and the entrepreneurial class. Thus, he lead the effort to slash taxes for the rich as a conservative Congress and Administration left the nation with a trillion dollar annual budget.
Ryan leaves mourning the Senate's failure to approve his plans to cut "entitlements", i.e. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and food stamps. He bemoans these elements of our nation's safety net which he claims "might become a hammock that lulls able-bodied citizens into lives of complacency and dependency". Oddly enough, after the death of his father, the Speaker received Social Security Survivors benefits from the age of 16 to 18. These benefits funded his college education. No doubt treatment of his grandmother's Alzheimer's condition relied on "entitlements".
While he bitterly fought to repeal the Affordable Care Act, commonly know as Obamacare. Ryan uses the passage of the new budget revisions as his most significant contribution to his country. He believes that current policy changes enacted by the Trump Administration is "the path to reducing government's impositions on the managers and owners of capital to the good of society".
Paul Ryan went to Congress in 1999 representing Wisconsin's First Congressional District. He served as Chairman of the House Budget Committee from 2011 to 2015 and Chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee before assuming the duties of Speaker of the House. He was running mate to MA Governor Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential campaign.
We'll see if Ryan, leaving politics at the age of 48, has presidential ambitions as he looks forward to the future. Think about it, in 2024, he'll just be 54 years old.
