Free Republic

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Thursday that Democrats squandered their ability to demand a so-called “DACA fix” as part of the year-end spending bill when their leaders refused to show up for a meeting with President Trump this week to conduct negotiations. Mr. Ryan also rejected the year-end deadline Democrats have set up for granting citizenship to illegal immigrants, saying the phaseout for the Obama-era deportation amnesty runs through March, giving Congress until next year to figure out what to do. He took a tough line on Democrats’ decision to ditch Mr. Trump in a bipartisan leaders meeting Tuesday,...

Republicans have long been known as "the stupid party." They do stupid things, such as waiting until mid-November to push a must-pass tax cut that should have been done by April. But in recent weeks the GOP is finally showing some brains and some backbone on taxes. They are using their majorities in Congress to roll back and roll over the left, and it's about time. In a more rational world, tax reform could have been bipartisan. But once Democrats declared they would be unified obstructionists on tax reform, there was no reason to throw a bone to the "resistance...

It is November 17 and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is ignoring national reciprocity legislation for a 45th consecutive week. National reciprocity would treat concealed carry permits like driver’s licenses, making the license from one state valid in the other 49. Such a reciprocal system would allow law-abiding Americans to keep their handguns on their persons for defense of themselves and their families as they travel throughout the country. Breitbart News reported that Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) introduced national reciprocity legislation on January 3, 2017. His bill “would allow people with a state-issued concealed carry license or permit to conceal...

Levin: Apparently, there are members of Congress who are predators. Turn about is fair play right? Destroy the Judge’s reputation and say you won’t “seat him.” How about applying the same rules to yourselves with same proof? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Levin called for McConnell and Ryan to step down after Rep Jackie Speier announced yesterday that sexual harassment had been covered up in Congress. She also claims that Congress has paid out over $15 million over the last ten years to settle cases. (Related – Rep Speier: $15 Million Paid To Settle House...

If you’d told me last year that complete Republican control of Congress and the White House would lead to nothing getting done, I would have laughed at you. Of course, last year I would have laughed at the idea of complete Republican control of government, so the idea of no legislative accomplishments would have been a joke not worth telling. Turns out all the jokes, at least so far, have been on us. That Obamacare repeal fell apart – or, more correctly, never really got off the ground – was a surprise only because Republicans had promised it for years...

On his nationally syndicated radio talk show Thursday, host Mark Levin slammed Republicans for their new “schizophrenic” tax proposal, saying they are acting like “good little Marxists” but that their proposal “is not tax reform.” “The Republicans are sounding like good little Marxists,” said Mark Levin. “They’re worried about class warfare rather than talking about slashing taxes across the board and reforming the tax code, maybe a fair tax, maybe a flat tax – all that’s out the window. This is not tax reform.” Levin’s comments came after Republicans in the House released a new tax proposal the “Tax Cut...

House Republicans on Friday quietly made changes to their far-reaching tax overhaul: Now its tax cuts would be less generous for many Americans. A day after the GOP unveiled its plan promising middle-class relief, the House's top tax-writer, Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, released a revised version of the bill that would impose a new, lower-inflation "chained CPI" adjustment for tax brackets immediately instead of in 2023. That means more income would be taxed at higher rates over time — and less generous tax cuts for individuals and families. The change, posted on the website of the Ways and Means Committee,...

Daily Caller — Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said Monday that it isn’t congressional Republicans’ role to defend President Trump from the investigations into Russian election interference and pushed back against the notion that special counsel Robert Mueller is biased against the president.

House Republicans on Thursday narrowly adopted the Senate’s version of the 2018 budget resolution, overcoming a key hurdle for the party’s tax-reform plan. The budget will allow Republicans to pass a tax overhaul that adds up to $1.5 trillion to the deficit through a process known as reconciliation, which only requires 51 votes to pass in the Senate. Twenty Republicans voted against the budget in the 216-212 vote, more than the 18 who voted against the original House version earlier this month. Most of the 20 defectors were centrists hailing from populous states that could stand to lose from eliminating...

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paul-ryan-daca-omnibus-conservatives_us_59efd21ce4b0b7e63265bb76

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan mourned Sen. Jeff Flake’s (R-AZ) decision not to seek re-election, describing his retirement as a loss for “the greater cause of conservatism.” “I’m saddened Congress is losing my friend Jeff Flake. Throughout his career in public service, Jeff has been a champion of constitutional, limited government and a trailblazer for fiscal restraint,” Ryan said in a statement. “He as much as anyone helped to end a corrosive earmarking process that enabled runaway spending. Jeff’s retirement is a loss to the Senate and the greater cause of conservatism. I wish him well as he continues to...

Paul Ryan’s governing caucus is dwindling. A number of the speaker's closest comrades in the House have called it quits in recent weeks because they're tired of President Donald Trump's antics, depressed over the GOP's dearth of legislative accomplishments this year or have personal reasons. Whatever the causes, the departures are certain to make Ryan's job as House speaker harder, depriving him of loyal lieutenants in a conference already riven by ideological and stylistic divisions.

After eight years in the wilderness, Republicans have a president who will sign nearly anything they put in front of him. You’d think they’d revel in the opportunity to pass legislation they’d been dreaming of codifying in law, but you’d be wrong. Rather than attempt to implement the ideas on which they’d campaigned and won on, they’re staring blankly like a poker player who over-bet with a pair of twos and had his bluff called. But it’s not just elected Republicans; it’s the entire conservative movement that's dropped the ball. After eight years in exile, where are the innovations,...

(CNN)Top White House aides, lawmakers, donors and political consultants are privately asking whether President Donald Trump realizes that losing the House next year could put his presidency in peril. In more than a dozen interviews, Republicans inside and outside the White House told CNN conversations are ramping up behind the scenes about whether Trump fully grasps that his feuds with members of his own party and shortage of legislative achievements could soon put the fate of his presidency at risk. Donors who trekked to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in support of House Speaker Paul Ryan were treated to a slide show...

Press Release Statement on Trump Administration's Decision Regarding Obamacare Payments October 12, 2017|Speaker Ryan's Press Office WASHINGTON–House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) today issued the following statement regarding the Trump administration’s determination that certain payments under Obamacare have no valid appropriation: “Under our Constitution, the power of the purse belongs to Congress, not the executive branch. It was in defense of this foundational principle that the House, under the leadership of former speaker John Boehner, voted in 2014 to challenge the constitutionality of spending by the Obama administration that was never approved by Congress. The House was validated last year when...

Earlier this week we told you about how Nick Ayers, Vice President Mike Pence’s Chief of Staff had bluntly told a group of major donors that they should tell Capitol Hill’s Republican establishment that they would “…not only stop donating, I would form a coalition of all the other major donors, and just say two things. We’re definitely not giving to you, No. 1. And No. 2, if you don’t have this done by Dec. 31, we’re going out, we’re recruiting opponents, we’re maxing out to their campaigns, and we’re funding super PACs to defeat all of you.”

“Michigan’s strictest-in-the-nation term limits law will force nearly 70 percent of state senators out of office in 2019 and more than 20 percent of representatives,” reports the Detroit News, “a mass turnover that is fueling renewed interest in reform.” What?!! Could term limitation laws actually make our poor underpaid and overworked politicians vacate their powerful perches . . . even when they don’t want to? Heaven forbid! Who could have foreseen this strange turn of events? Who could have predicted that limits on the number of terms politicians may stay in office would mandate that politicians, having reached that limit,...

There’s that scene in Star Wars Episode VI when the Rebel Alliance finds itself between the Death Star and the Imperial Fleet to which Admiral Ackbar shouts, “It’s a trap!” It’s a line used  heavily in pop culture—and that’s all I can say to the Republican Party as they consider joining Democrats to ban “bump stocks.”The device is used to increase the rate of fire of a semi-automatic weapon. It’s not the same as automatic—and no, it doesn’t convert a semiautomatic system into an automatic one. That falsehood surely made its rounds yesterday. At least some outlets were somewhat more...

Dear Mr. Speaker: The epidemic of gun violence in our country continues to challenge the conscience of our nation. Today, our nation woke up to news of the worst mass shooting in our history, claiming the lives of at least 58 innocent men and women in Las Vegas. Nearly 12,000 Americans have been killed by guns with 273 mass shootings in 2017 – one for each day of the year. On average, more than 90 Americans lose their lives to gun violence every day, a daily toll of heartbreak and tragedy in communities across America. Congress has a moral duty...

Two days after an attacker opened fire on concert goers in Las Vegas, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc) announced he was shelving legislation to deregulate suppressors. -snip- Ryan has now shelved the Hearing Protection Act, which was introduced into Congress on January 9; it is the legislation containing suppressor deregulation. The Act does not legalize suppressors–as they are already legal–rather, it removes the burdensome process for acquiring them and erases the federal tax that must be paid in order to receive permission to posses one. House Speaker Paul Ryan says NRA-backed bill to ease regulations on gun silencers is shelved...