Paul Ryan has had a tough couple of months.

The House GOP’s response to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis is stuck, with a big May 1 deadline looming. The leadership’s 2017 budget plan is stalled. And legislation to overhaul the Federal Aviation Administration hasn’t left the runway.


With all the attention showered on Ryan’s non-interest in running for president, it’s easy to overlook the new speaker’s troubles running the House these days.

Almost six months into the job, Ryan and his top lieutenants face questions about whether the Wisconsin Republican’s tenure atop the House is any more effective than that of his predecessor, former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Ryan has flattered the House Freedom Caucus and pursued promises to empower rank-and-file Republicans with reforms to how the House operates — yet it’s yielded little in the way of actual results.

Democrats are openly mocking their GOP counterparts, and Republicans grumble — in private so far — that nothing is getting done under Ryan. Like Boehner, Ryan is finding out that becoming speaker is easier than being speaker, at least in the still badly divided House GOP Conference.

The rise of Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump — which has shocked GOP leaders on Capitol Hill as much as it has Republican heavyweights nationwide — has also injected more uncertainty into the legislative process. With the party base so unsettled, rank-and-file GOP members don’t want to do anything that could alienate pro-Trump voters back home. “Don’t piss anyone off” has become the unofficial mantra for Republicans, which has led to paralysis.

No House Republican wants to openly criticize Ryan. And there’s no question he is more popular than Boehner was at the end of his five-year run leading the House.

But there are complaints that Ryan has worked so hard to accommodate disaffected conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus and elsewhere — the same crew that took out Boehner and blocked Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from moving up to speaker — that he risks coming up empty-handed. With the House majority in jeopardy this year, as Ryan has admitted in his own fundraising appeals, some Republicans want a stronger hand atop the chamber.

To them, the time for conciliation is over.

“I think Boehner would have listened to it for a little bit, given everybody a chance to chew on it and swallow it and spit it out, and then he would have just taken it to the damn floor,” said one Republican on condition of anonymity, contrasting Ryan’s style with Boehner’s. “I think [Ryan] has underestimated the opposition to getting anything done.”

Another Republican said the GOP Conference “is unwhippable and unleadable. Ryan is as talented as you can be: There’s nobody better. But even he can’t do anything. Who could?”

Ryan’s difficulties have come into sharp relief this week. With federal taxes due Monday, he and House Republicans dubbed it “IRS Week.” GOP leaders set up a series of votes to bash the troubled tax agency, including a bill to prevent the IRS from hiring new employees until it could certify no one working there owed back taxes.

But it’s all been overshadowed by the failure to make headway on the GOP’s larger agenda.

A House bill to address the Puerto Rico crisis is bogged down in committee after some Republicans cried “bailout,” despite Ryan’s insistence the measure is no such thing. The GOP-drafted budget has been stalled for weeks because of objections from conservatives still upset over last year’s spending deal with President Barack Obama and Democrats. That’s led to a delay taking up the dozen annual appropriations bills until mid-May.

A continuing resolution to keep the federal government open past Sept. 30 was likely in any case. But the holdup on spending bills — and a seven-week recess the House is set to take in July and August — means a continuing resolution to fund agencies is all but certain at this point. The only question is whether there will be a broader spending deal after Election Day, and what an agreement would look like.

Indeed, 2016, which always figured to be light on legislative accomplishments, is proving to be a virtual wasteland on the House side.

Only 40 legislative days remain before the House adjourns for the national conventions, and nothing substantive is expected to happen until a projected lame-duck session in November. House Republicans won’t shut down the government in September, but they’re not going to do much else.

“Even under a different speaker, the deep divisions among House Republicans continue to prevent them from getting their work done,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said. “They have failed to pass a budget, the House has yet to take up legislation to address the debt crisis in Puerto Rico, and their plan to begin considering appropriations bills in April will not happen. From the government shutdown to taking our nation to the brink of default, House Republicans have shown again and again that they are incapable of governing — and it’s no different under a new speaker.”

Aides to Ryan say everyone always knew the legislative deck would be stacked against House Republicans this year, with the battle for the White House in full swing and Senate Republicans in jeopardy of losing their short-lived majority.

“Since Speaker Ryan took the gavel six months ago, the House of Representatives has been very productive and members are excited to roll out our ‘confident America’ policy agenda for 2017,” AshLee Strong, Ryan’s spokeswoman, said in a statement.

While Ryan received well-deserved credit for clinching December’s $1.1 trillion tax and spending deal, much of the framework for that agreement had been put in place by Boehner when he struck a deal with Obama before resigning as speaker at the end of October.

Ryan has scored some wins this year. Republicans finally put a bill calling for Obamacare’s repeal on the president’s desk, though it was, of course, vetoed. New sanctions on North Korea have been approved, as has a permanent ban on taxing Internet access. Other highlights include a bill to broaden public information on sex offenders; reforms for Zika vaccines; and a measure to pressure the Obama administration to declare that the Islamic State is involved in genocide.

Additionally, Ryan has gone to great lengths to dial back tensions with the Freedom Caucus and other hard-line conservatives. Going beyond standard GOP Conference meetings, he’s instituted weekly meetings with broad-based groups of rank-and-file lawmakers to make them feel more involved and listened to. The speaker has thrown himself into fundraising, raking in more than $17 million in the first three months of this year, a staggering haul.

Republicans also pin blame for their problems on Obama, even when the president has no direct role in provoking squabbles among congressional Republicans.

“First of all, you have a disaster of a president who is not willing to compromise in any way, shape or form, and who is going to issue new regulations every day he can,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), the chief deputy majority whip. “So the difficulty of legislating in this environment is extraordinarily high.”

“Paul Ryan is doing exactly what we asked him to do,” added Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.). “That’s to communicate broadly to the public why we think a conservative vision for the country is attractive. He’s doing a good job of that. He’s working substantively through the committees of the House and trying to bring back regular order.”

Ryan does hope to move on some key issues in coming weeks. A House version of legislation to address the nation’s opiate crisis will likely hit the floor next month, though it will then have to be reconciled with a Senate version. A bipartisan bill to limit what emails Internet providers can turn over to government agencies is set to be taken up soon. And efforts to rein in new Obama administration regulations on brokers who handle retirement accounts, overtime pay and “joint employers” will also see a vote.

Meanwhile, Ryan-appointed task forces are slated to release proposals by late May or early June for replacing Obamacare and reforming the tax code. The plans will become the centerpiece of Ryan’s vision for House Republicans, though none are expected to be voted on this year, and they have no chance of being enacted if they do.

“Paul is trying to define what the Republican Party is for the public out there, but sort of reassure us up here,” said Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.). “I feel like I’m a good Republican, yet you just don’t know anymore. If you read your Facebook page, you get called all these names and stuff like that. … I feel like I’m a good Republican; at least I haven’t gone back on what I ran on. But I don’t know.”

