Wednesday Feb 24, 2016 · 2:53 PM EST
For a former budget committee chairman—and GOP golden boy—House Speaker Paul Ryan is proving astoundingly inept at leading his conference in coming up with a budget. He began the Congressional session in January promising that once the House failed one more time to repeal Obamacare, they'd get the 2017 budget and spending bills done first thing. “First thing” has turned into March, and March is clearly going to turn into maybe sometime before November. Because the House Republican conference can't be led, except by the Heritage Foundation, with all the money its attached Heritage Action group has to spend.
Further complicating Speaker Paul Ryan's effort, the Heritage Foundation—the right's most influential think-tank—unveiled a budget blueprint that goes far, far beyond anything Ryan is proposing when it comes to slashing government spending.
The aggressive conservative wish list, provided to POLITICO, is likely to increase unrest in the Republican conference and boost hardliners’ resistance to leadership’s pitch of sticking to a spending deal made with President Barack Obama.
“The point of the blueprint is both to educate the public but also to influence Congress and the presidential candidates,” said Paul Winfree, director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation.
The public would be horrified by reading what Heritage has in store for them in their wish list. Of course there's the obligatory defunding of Planned Parenthood, and cutting off of funds for clean air and water enforcement. But they go all the way down to things like eliminating grants under the Violence Against Women Act (make those domestic violence shelters have bake sales!), disaster assistance for small businesses, and healthy food for school children. This is what the House maniacs are going to line up behind.
Meanwhile, the current budget chairman and Ryan are working within the realm of budgeting and spending that they inherited from the agreement outgoing speaker John Boehner worked out, the one that could actually pass in both the House and Senate and be signed by the president. But they have been working with the Freedom-y types toward something those guys might not totally oppose, "a compromise in which discretionary spending would remain at the higher level, but the House would pursue significant cuts to mandatory and entitlement spending through the appropriations process or in a reconciliation bill." That might lose them some fed-up Republicans and all Democrats—and thus would make it impossible to pass. And now that Heritage has released its marching orders, a compromise probably isn't going to be good enough for all the Freedomy folks.
So Ryan is in the thickets, where any Republican "leader" is going to end up. Meanwhile, John Boehner must be kicking his feet up with a bourbon and a cigarette, having a great time not having to deal with this particular set of clowns.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/24/1490470/-The-secretly-elected-Heritage-crew-creates-new-headaches-for-House-Speaker-Paul-Ryan
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