As Ryan takes over, can he tame the reckless Establishment?

By Timothy P. Carney, Timothy P. Carney

Published December 20, 2015

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House Speaker Paul Ryan has a harder job than many of his predecessors. Rarely has the speaker had to deal with such an irresponsible and unserious group of politicians so uninterested in good governance.

This dangerous group goes by many names including: "the Establishment," the "centrists," and the "bipartisan consensus."

The budget deal just passed by outgoing Speaker John Boehner, in collaboration with the Democratic leadership and the Obama White House, was a tour de force of bad lawmaking, unserious budgeting, and politically expedient irresponsibility. It averts a debt-ceiling emergency and sets spending levels through next year, but it does so by busting the spending caps that these same leaders just recently created. It supposedly offsets these spending hikes with spending cuts in the distant future.