Rep. Raul Labrador, a member of the influential House Freedom Caucus, didn’t take long to reach a verdict on new House Speaker Paul Ryan – he’s not much better than the previous speaker, and Labrador was no fan of John Boehner.
The way the Idaho congressman, a staunch conservative, sees it, Ryan has not made the kind of changes in the House that he indicated he would.
"It's too early to judge the speakership of Paul Ryan, and I think it is fundamentally unfair to try and judge the speakership of Paul Ryan over the last month or so,” Labrador told reporters on Wednesday. “But, as I have also said, the honeymoon is over.”
He went on, "I think he needs to start putting up real conservative reform in the House and doing the things that are necessary to show the voters that he is a different speaker than John Boehner, because, frankly, everything he has done so far is no different than what John Boehner would have done."
Labrador did say that there’s still time for the Wisconsin congressman to have an impact and advance conservative ideals.
"I do think he has a year to make that up, and I think we all want to give him that opportunity to make that up," Labrador said, according to Politico.
"The question is will Ryan be a good speech-maker or a good policy-maker?” he said. “The question is not just, 'Can you deliver on the speech?' but 'Can you deliver on the substance? The question is whether the Republican Party is a conservative party or not. I'm afraid that so far we've shown that [the GOP] is not a conservative party."
Ryan became speaker after Boehner, of Ohio, who was under fire from conservatives in the House, decided to step down from his post as well as resign from Congress.
Ryan, who was Mitt Romney's running mate during the 2012 election, was seen as someone who could galvanize the moderates and conservatives in his party, as well as someone who could work with Democrats in order to get things done.
His first accomplishments included pushing a budget deal through by an overwhelming margin and a vote to repeal Obamacare, a bill that now awaits the president's veto.
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