As the Republican Presidential Convention nears, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-WI, is a name continually considered for the Republican presidential nominee in the case of a brokered convention.
Ryan, though, has proved he does not have the legislative savviness to properly control the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, even if both are controlled by Republicans.
Without a doubt, Congress, under President Barack Obama, has been more inactive than under any other president in recent history. Even under a Republican-controlled House and Senate, effective legislation has been few and far between.
With Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, stepping down from the Speaker of the House position, Ryan was looked to as the successor whom, with his youth and charisma, had the ability to make the House more effective.
But under Ryan’s guidance, the House has moved from ineffective to ridiculous.
The biggest accomplishments of Ryan’s House, thus far, has been naming post offices and filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging Obama’s executive orders on immigration.
While these two legislative actions have little impact on the American people, the major issues have gone unaddressed. Issues such as combating the Zika virus, addressing the Flint water crisis and helping Puerto Rico avoid default have not been addressed. Two of these, the Zika virus and Flint water crisis, are public health concerns that could and should be addressed by Ryan.
More impressively, Republican House leaders have not been able to craft a budget — their most important job — despite six weeks of deliberation.
Ryan should be wielding the powerful Speaker of the House position to force compromise among Republicans for his sake and his party’s benefit because he has the tools to make this happen. And with a 13 percent approval rating, the Republican-controlled House needs to make a substantial change in the way it operates.
As speaker, Ryan has three measures that can force the House to take action: the ability to recognize who can speak during a floor session, deciding who gets appointed to what committee and earmarks.
Now, all of these measures are quite petty, but pettiness forced the House into this inactive state, so pettiness will solve this crisis. The most petty, by far, is the speaker’s ability to recognize who can speak during a floor session. The speaker can effectively decide which voices are allowed to be heard. That said, Ryan can essentially limit the speech of representatives that aren’t helping to effectively run the government — which is something he should be employing.
The appointing process to committees is one of the most popular ways of keeping members of the House in line. Threatening to demote a representative from the chair of a committee is key to controlling that member because of the major role committees play in formulating policy. Every bill, before going to the House floor, passes through a committee and the committee chair chooses which of his or her bills move onto a House-wide vote.
Earmarks, or commonly known as pork barrel spending, is probably the easiest and best way to make the House more efficient again. Earmarks are essentially legal bribes to get representatives to vote for a bill. The bribes don’t go to the representatives — it goes to the representative’s constituents in a public works project. Once Boehner outlawed these bribes, the House stopped working. Ryan should return to giving out free money if he wants to see a more effective legislature.
Ryan is a reasonable person. He is a possible future presidential candidate, but as president, he would need to wield all the power of the office. If he cannot do so as Speaker of the House, how could he do so as president?
Aaron Reilly ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in comparative literature and Russian.
