It’s official: Paul Ryan won’t be running for re-election. He’s the 39th Republican to announce a retirement from office this year. It’s almost as if they know something.
He stated his two major accomplishments:
Ryan had long championed overhauling the tax code, a goal accomplished with the passage last year of the sweeping GOP tax bill.
“That’s something I’ve been working on my entire adult life,” Ryan said at his news conference.
He cited tax reform and rebuilding the military as his two biggest achievements and said he wants to accomplish more before stepping down.
What? He’s proud of a tax reform that’s a bonanza for the filthy rich and increases our debt?
Someone tell me when our military was weak and needed strengthening, because right now all I see is expensive overkill. So Ryan helped make that worse?
I think it’s more like he’s done all the damage he can do, and he’s getting out to enjoy his ill-gotten gains.
The key question, I suppose, is how long it will take the next lot who inherit the US government to reverse the damage.
… 39th Republican to announce a retirement from office this year. It’s almost as if they know something.
Please, you guys – tell all the other Republicans!
The way things seem to work, they’ll be a bunch of “centrists” who will strive to put things about halfway between where they were before and where they are now…
Good riddance to bad garbage. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
He says he’s leaving because of his family, and he may be telling the truth. It may be that his family told him they just couldn’t bear the humiliation and embarrassment of having him publicly shill for the Trump administration.
It may very well be like Boehner, where he’s getting out so he doesn’t have to deal with the ill-named “Freedom Caucus” anymore. I have no doubt that Ryan would love to stay and do more damage. But if Trump goes full Saturday Night Massacre, which is seeming ever more likely, it falls on Ryan and the House to impeach and the Freedom Fries are absolutely not going to go for that. Ryan then is faced with letting Trump off, which will be major bad PR going into November, or starting impeachment proceedings and setting the Freedom Fries into open revolt. His retirement announcement may very well hint that he’s willing to go impeachment route since he can just bail out afterward and leave someone else to clean up the fry grease.
It will be so tough, stepping down from his current salary of $223,500 to a pension of $75,990*. Maybe he’ll have to go on a book tour or charge for speaking engagements or something
*My own calculation from 20 years in the house with a “High-3 salary” as speaker of $223,500 going back to the raise he gave himself in 2015 and using the formula from Graham’s calculation of Boehner’s pension
https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/10/what-kind-of-pension-will-john-boehner-collect/408547/
http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/29/pf/jobs/paul-ryan-pay-hike/index.html
IMHO, this is a big part of why we’ve been sliding further and further to the right. Republicans eff up so much when they have the opportunity, that once Dems get some control back, they can never manage to repair it all, let alone significantly improve things.
As for the military, we could probably stand some strengthening, or maybe improvement or restructuring would be better terms. It would be nice to have more troops since we seem to be committed to perpetual conflict in the Middle East while also antagonizing Russia, Iran, and the DPRK, not to mention dealing with China’s expansion into its neighboring waters. But we are throwing away immense amounts of money on silly, unnecessary, and redundant shit.Wasn’t that long ago Ryan and Boehner kept a sizable P&W contract in the appropriations bill despite the Pentagon explicitly telling them that the surplus jet engines contracted for weren’t wanted, let alone needed.So, yeah, we could definitely improve our military capability, not sure that requires the amounts we’re spending. At the very least we should probably be expecting much better returns on the immense investment.
Nope. The GOP tax law fails as “tax reform.” They did lower tax rates for business and the rich, but they failed to close loopholes. In fact they introduced some new ones.
F#cker’ll probably make more next year than he did his entire Congressional career.
I know most Congesscritters are wealthy before they get there (pretty much have to be), but maybe we need to limit their salaries to the national average.At the least, we might get more folks that actually give a shit rather than are stroking their egos, eyeing a future in lobbying or just couldn’t find another job thay they only had to show up for 100-some days a year.
Sez who? It was reformed so that the wealthy get even richer, big corporations get even richer, and, as a result, they receive ever greater campaign contributions for their “service”. Oh, and the middle class and the poor take it in the shorts with higher taxes and fewer available services. Sounds like it went exactly as intended.
I think it’s more like he’s done all the damage he can do, and he’s getting out to enjoy his ill-gotten gains.
He doesn’t want to be behind the steering wheel when the wheels come off the bus. That way he can sit back and throw rocks and blame everyone else. Worked for Dick Cheney.
I don’t know how do describe this, maybe “interesting”?: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/4/11/1756173/-Unnamed-Republican-congressman-goes-off-in-profane-rant-We-might-as-well-impeach-the
There is of course the possibility that he will be President by the time elections roll around.
He got half a million in campaign contributions for the Kochs after passing the tax law. https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2018/01/23/thats-some-payoff/
And now he has no campaign to spend it on. I’m not expert in this. What happens to campaign money when there no longer is a campaign?
Ragutis @8:
One thing that would probably strengthen the military is finally admitting after 17 years that the F-35 does not work and will not be made to work, and there’s no point in wasting any more money on the boondoggle deathtrap that has already been spent. And even if it does eventually get made to work, by the time it does so its advanced features will be obsolete.
We have a better measure: The level at which you’re making too much to receive government aid. This is the point where the government has said: “You’re fine. You don’t need help.” We can conclude that this level is quite sufficient for a citizen (/family, however it’s calculated), so why should the representatives get any more than that?
Republican Number Forty just bailed.
making an extreme limit on Congressional salaries would have a similar effect as term limits that is insuring that lobbyist and the rich and powerful will have more influence and control than they do now.
I think it might be better to some how make immediate and unconditional disclosure of the source of all campaign funds as well as who backs all of the front groups and pacs. with their patriotic and misleading names . How to do that I have now idea.
uncle frogy
He may well be preparing for a Presidential run in 2020 or 2024, depending on how events turn out.
If Ryan wanted to be President, he’d have run in 2016. So I’m thinking he’s bailing because the prospect of staying on doesn’t appeal to him.
So basically, a guy who spent decades trying to steal our retirements and force us to work into our 70s, is retiring with a very fat government pension at the age of 48.
Go figure.
The truth was that the house gym was getting rid of the full length mirrors near the weight lifting area.
The funniest thing was that I read in my favorite weekly magazine that Ryan was a fierce critic of Trump, though the article failed to mention the Nobel laureate in physics, who achieved crossing over to alternate dimensions, where that’s a thing.
Collectively to those thinking he’ll run: correct me if I’m wrong but no candidate in the line of succession has ever stepped, ran a presidential campaign and won, even the cheesiest political thrillers point out, such a person becomes toxic, politically dead. I have to hand it to Ryan, he fully expects loss of control for the GOP this year, and Trump would replace him with Scalise.
@OverlappingMagisteria: Stephen Colbert has acquired this information on air when he had a super pac, ever since Citizen United, all unused money is tax free with no spending restrictions, hence why Karl Rove was sued for that swet sweet money after Romney lost.
given we see the same patterns here in NZ with 9 years of neoliberal rule (national party here more and more resembling the republican party in the states), I’d say this is more accurate than not.
John Key even stepped down from being PM… before he sold his house for too much money to Chinese investors. He’s already bought a mansion in Hawaii. The media just wished him well, and didn’t even bother to really investigate why he might be pulling a rather rare stunt like this.
we should be tar and feathering these con men.
and I think they know it.
Ragutis@8 —
The US does not need any significant increase in military personnel. It currently has the third largest standing army in the world with 1.3 million people in active service, behind only India and China. And while acknowledging that the US faces several difficult issues such as the expansion of China into the Pacific, increasing the size of the military would not make any difference there. (China is already afraid of the US military because of its technological edge and its network of alliances, which is one of the reasons China is engaging in a slow, patient, defensively-oriented expansion.)
Meanwhile, an increased military brings with it:-
1. Increased costs, huge components of which are not allowed to be scrutinised by Congress or anyone else.
2. Increased temptation by warhawks to play with their toys. There’s no point owning a fancy sports car if you never take it out of the garage.
3. Increased temptation to rely on military action or the threat of military action to resolve international disputes.
4. Increased temptation to ignore allies and partners.
5. Increased diversion of military equipment into domestic police forces.
6. Further scuppering of education, welfare, health, and science budgets to feed the only government arm that right-wing nullocrats believe in expanding without moderation.
7. Creating a de facto welfare system that can only be accessed by joining the military, thus creating a class of Americans who rely on government for their iiving (as they would on welfare), but who are contractually locked into doing what their commanders tell them to do and are subject to martial law if they refuse.
8. Further entrenching the current US military culture of unaccountability and unthinking adherence to chain of command even when the commanders are acting illegally and even unconstitutionally.
He has made so much money as a rethug I hope he chokes.
Ragutis @ 8
They weren’t needed by the Pentagon, maybe. But I’ll bet you the Rethuglican congresscreature whose district they’re being built in needed those jet engines built rather desperately, since otherwise their constituents lose jobs, which might cause said Rethuglican congresscreature to lose theirs. At which point they might have to work for a living, and then where would we all be?
He’s spent 20 years in the house making congresscritter pennies. He’s not even 50 yet. He has a long career in a PAC to look forward to, raking in the real cash. Unlike campaign contributions, he can actually keep all the money he makes there. Well, minus whatever taxes he forced himself to pay.
Clearly the US needed to invest in chairs. o.o
@30 Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y
The thing is even the republicans know capitalism fails. They need ‘socialist’ public spending to keep the economy afloat. So its farming subsidies, NASA, and the military. Being alpha males the military is the one of choice – especially if your family is genetically disposed to bone spurs or other misdiagnosed cowardice.
@Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y
Haha, that actually made me laugh.
I guess the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is the only one who sits.
DING DING DING DING DING! Tell her what she’s won!
Oh, that was so obviously and transparently the reason, but the millions (billions?) still got approved and blown with absolutely no justifiable reason. It’s the same as the bullshit “save the coal industry” crap. Somehow, keeping a couple of thousand obsolete, dangerous, poisonous jobs that the industry itself is doing everything it can to scrap, garners tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of votes at the ballot box. So much, so so so effing much much of our nation’s policies are based on utter bullshit. Democrats are certainly not innocent, but Republicans of late are looking like the bastard spawn of Baron Munchausen and the boy who cried wolf. I don’t want to trash the folks who fall for the BS, but at some point it should become as blatantly obvious as (respects to Bad Religion) ” a million blinding brilliant white Incendiary lights” if only they’d look for information rather than confirmation of their own feelings and biases. Gotta admit though, Fox and offshoots like Sinclair have been hugely effective. They’ve really got people suckered. Back in the day, most people in the Soviet Union knew Pravda was bullshit.