Excerpt
SUMMARY: In his first four working weeks, new Speaker of the House Paul Ryan presided over passage of a $600 billion defense bill, a bill to tighten screening of Syrian refugees and a five-year highway bill. Political director Lisa Desjardins offers a closer look at Ryan’s agenda, then joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the funding deadline.
REP. PAUL RYAN, Speaker of the House: What’s next?
LISA DESJARDINS (NewsHour): Paul Ryan is on a roll. In his first four working weeks, the new speaker presided over passage of a $600 billion defense bill, a plan to tighten screening of Syrian refugees, and a five-year highway bill, the types of big controversial bills that had been stuck in Capitol gridlock sometimes for years.
REP. PAUL RYAN: I became speaker just over a month ago, and I would like to think we have hit the ground running. We are dealing with everything from highways, to ISIS, to funding the government.
LISA DESJARDINS: This wasn’t the plan for the 45-year-old from Wisconsin. He’d just started his dream job as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. But the father of three young children agreed to become speaker, thanks to two chaotic weeks when sharply divided Republicans could not agree on anyone else.
REP. PAUL RYAN: Thursday was a great day. Thursday was a day where we came together as a conference and unified, and agreed to proceed together with a vision.
LISA DESJARDINS: And his vision is about ideas. Ryan is a student of political philosophy, influenced by his mentor, the late conservative Jack Kemp, who saw free markets and tax cuts as the best antidotes to poverty, and Ayn Rand, the divisive author who stressed individualism.
Ryan is an admirer, but has been careful to say he doesn’t fully embrace her philosophy. He is a bootstraps conservative, setting out to retool not just the Republican House, but the Republican agenda itself.
IMHO it's still more for the rich and much less for the rest of us.
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