House Speaker Paul D. Ryan called for more civility in politics Wednesday, and while not naming any specific presidential candidates, said all politicians have a responsibility to fight over ideas and principles rather than play to voters’ fears.
In a speech to congressional interns, the Wisconsin Republican continued his push for a less vitriolic, more policy-centric debate in Washington. He admitted to his own past transgression in trying to divide the country into taxpaying “makers” and welfare-based “takers,” and said it was “callous” of him.
“Sometimes today we see a politics that is degrading, a politics that’s going to the basest of our emotions, of what dis-unifies us, not what unifies us,” he said. “As leaders we need to raise our gaze and we need to raise our game.”
Since ascending to the speakership late last year, Mr. Ryan has been pressing colleagues to tone down personal attacks on one another and instead battle over their ideas. He said that’s how the country’s founders envisioned the system working.
Mr. Ryan has in recent weeks criticized GOP front-runner Donald Trump for his rhetoric and some of his policy proposals on the campaign trail this year, but did repeat those specific criticisms Wednesday.
Democrats dismissed the speech as an attempt to distract from his first months in office, where he’s struggled to meet deadlines and failed to overcome the divisions that led his predecessor, former Speaker John A. Boehner, to resign.
“The ’Do-Nothing’ Republican Congress is leaving town today for two weeks without taking action on a budget, and without addressing the three major public health crises of Zika, opioid addiction and the Flint water crisis,” said Drew Hammill, spokesman for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. “Speaker Ryan can talk all he wants, but the total failure of the Republican Congress speaks louder than anything.”
Mr. Ryan took the helm of the House vowing to open up the floor process and to undo the top-down approach that had often been used by Mr. Boehner to force through last-minute agreements struck with President Obama.
He said he would listen to rank-and-file members and build legislation from the bottom up, relying on the committees that are supposed to have amassed expertise on the issues.
He said that approach has already paid off when Congress approved a rewrite of the No Child Left Behind education law and passed a multiyear transportation-funding bill, ending a cycle of short-term fixes.
But Mr. Ryan, a former chairman of the Budget Committee and the party’s 2012 vice presidential candidate, has been unable to secure the votes to get a budget through the House this year after several dozen conservatives demanded GOP leaders find some $30 billion in deeper spending cuts. He’s poised to miss the April 15 deadline written in law for Congress to finish a budget, and his own self-imposed end-of-March deadline for finding a solution to Puerto Rico’s debt problem.
Still, he’s earned positive reviews from conservatives who praise his heavy emphasis on philosophical outreach, making the rounds of conservative broadcasters to press his case on behalf of the House GOP.
The Wisconsin Republican has tried to stay out of the GOP’s divisive presidential primary, and has flatly ruled out being drafted to be the nominee at the party’s nominating convention in July.
And he’s tried to lead by example on civility, acknowledging his own failings Wednesday. He said he used to deride those stuck in the cycle of poverty as “takers,” who were a drain on the government. But he said after talking with some of those in that position, he realized many of them are trying to raise themselves out of the cycle, but feel trapped.
“I realized something — I realized that I was wrong,” he said. “I stopped talking about it that way, and I stopped thinking about it that way.”
Asked by one of the congressional interns in his audience about policy mistakes he’s made, he said Congress went too far in cracking down on crime in the 1990s by imposing stiff mandatory sentences.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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