Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is in his final days as Speaker of the House, a job that he only reluctantly took in 2015 and will depart with a dearth of accomplishments. While he will leave office unable to realize his college dream of taking Medicaid away from poor people, he launched a tweet-storm on Tuesday morning celebrating the first anniversary of his sole major legislation: the Trump tax cuts that mostly benefited the rich and big corporations.

He began his tweet-storm by noting he’d been working for 20 years to cut taxes.

Twenty years before it became law, tax reform was just an idea. This is how it all began. pic.twitter.com/HAYdCBFfDK — Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) December 18, 2018

Ryan lamented in his tweets that becoming Speaker had meant giving up the one job he really wanted — chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee — but that he had worked hard to make sure he could still cut taxes for the privileged.

There is no way that that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would be the law of the land if we had just started last year. It took years of work in the @WaysandMeansGOP committee, and that’s the reason we were able to hit the landing in 2017. pic.twitter.com/sewdrCufWG — Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) December 18, 2018

Becoming Speaker was bittersweet because I was leaving the job I always wanted: being in charge of tax policy as chairman of @WaysAndMeansGOP. So as Speaker, I did everything I could to pave the way for real, comprehensive tax reform. pic.twitter.com/WYAMMb35RN — Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) December 18, 2018

Most dishonestly, he claimed that the bill was passed because he convinced his colleagues that “the need for reform outweighs the needs of special interests.”

Once in a generation, you can convince politicians that the need for reform outweighs the needs of the special interests. That’s exactly what happened when we passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, one year ago this week. pic.twitter.com/7KdvMxgmxR — Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) December 18, 2018

But the bill was a massive giveaway to special interests: The bill gave corporate lobbyists virtually everything they asked for in their multi-million dollar lobbying campaigns.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 slashed corporate tax rates — long a priority for big businesses — and lowered the top individual rates for the wealthiest Americans. Among the bill’s beneficiaries were the rich GOP lawmakers who wrote the bill and President Donald Trump himself. Though Trump, Ryan, and proponents vowed it would unleash unprecedented economic prosperity, almost none of the tax cuts’ benefits have gone to the middle class or Americans who make the least income. And the stock market has actually declined since its passage.


The tweets, sent from his official Speaker of the House account, featured sleekly produced videos chronicling how the bill became a law with everything but a Jack Sheldon song. They make no mention of the massive hole the bill blew in the deficit, and their production cost will no doubt increase the debt even further.

Earlier this year Ryan tweeted that thanks to the tax cuts, a secretary was saving $1.50 a week. Now, as he prepares to leave public office for the first time since 1999, he will have plenty of time to look back on his one legislative accomplishment.