House Speaker Paul Ryan won the speaker’s chair with the promise of a “new day” in the House of Representatives — a reality that means handing more control to the vast majority of Republicans elected since 2010 who long chafed at former Speaker John Boehner’s tight grip on power.
Ryan bluntly laid out the challenge of moving forward with support from older House Republicans and the new group, who make up almost 60% of the House Republican conference, in his speech Thursday shortly after taking the House gavel.
“Let’s be frank: The House is broken,” Ryan said. “We are not solving problems. We are adding to them. And I am not interested in laying blame. We are not settling scores. We are wiping the slate clean. Neither the members nor the people are satisfied with how things are going. We need to make some changes, starting with how the House does business.”
It could be a big change in a building where seniority has often determined which lawmakers get a say — including who gets coveted roles on powerful committees. And even with the two-year budget deal that Boehner delivered Ryan as a parting present, Ryan will have to test that balance between the new and the old on another spending battle: the fight over an omnibus spending bill that is due December 11.
The first of those changes will be a reworking of the House Steering Committee, which determines on which panels lawmakers serve. It sounds dry and arcane, but the decision promises to give more power to the new Republicans who fought Boehner and united behind Ryan.
Changing of the guard
Underlying one of the wildest stretches the Capitol has ever seen — from Boehner’s surprise announcement last month that he would retire to the rejection of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy for speaker and the recruitment of Ryan — has been a massive shift in control beginning with the tea party wave of 2010.
It’s something the old guard and new alike said has been a while coming.
“This generational change, it does represent a shift,” said Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican with 12 years in the House and a close ally of Boehner. “I mean, there is a new generation in power, a lot of very new members. Almost two-thirds of our conference has been elected since 2010. So this shift, in a sense, reflects their strength.”
The numbers are striking. According to seniority rankings compiled by House staff, 146 of the 247 House Republicans were elected on or after Nov. 2, 2010 — the tea party wave which handed control of the House to Republicans and Boehner to begin with.
But dissension in the ranks grew steadily during Boehner’s five years, boiling over when Rep. Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican elected in 2012, launched an effort in July to oust Boehner.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus and said they were angry at being frozen out by Boehner and an inability to place conservative priorities on President Barack Obama’s desk. Much of that angst took the form of complaints with too much power being bottled up in the speaker’s hands and not enough with rank-and-file Republicans.
“This has been a concern for a while,” said Rep. Bill Flores, chairman of the Republican Study Committee and a Texas Republican first elected in 2010. “If you go back to our organizing meetings that we had last November, many of us were bringing these issues up then and we were able to make some changes in the rules. Unfortunately, they were much more modest than what we had hoped.”
Many of the House Republicans say they see Ryan as a bridge between the group elected before 2010 and everyone elected after that first tea party wave. And Ryan himself spans the divide in the House, first having served as a legislative staffer immediately after the 1994 Gingrich Revolution, then being elected to a seat himself in 1998, and, now, overseeing the entire House.
That bridge was even reflected in the people who formally offered him to be speaker: Rep. Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican elected in 2010, nominated Ryan inside the Republican conference Wednesday. And Rep. Kristi Noem, a South Dakota Republican also elected in 2010, offered up a “second” speech supporting Ryan. But the other “second” speech in support of Ryan came from Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican elected in 2002 and a close ally of Boehner’s. And the formal nomination of Ryan on Thursday, before the full House, came from Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, a Washington Republican elected in 2004.
Promising a ‘fresh start’
When he spoke before his Republican colleagues Wednesday afternoon, Ryan promised a “fresh start” for the entire House, said Rep. Luke Messer, an Indiana Republican elected in 2012.
“Paul went up and gave a from-the-heart speech, without any notes, about the fact this had to be a new beginning. That this was an opportunity for a fresh start for our conference, and we couldn’t keep doing things the same old way,” Messer said Wednesday after Republicans picked him to be their nominee. “He has said we can’t keep doing things the same way unless we want the same results. And some of those changes are changes that can happen relatively quickly.”
Messer is overseeing much of that work as chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee. He and McMorris-Rodgers circulated a letter among colleagues earlier this week asking them for their suggestions and letting them know they wanted to decide on those changes before the first week of the new year.
The question now for Ryan is whether he will follow through on his promise to include younger members in the new power structure.
“I think Paul is definitely going to follow through,” said Rep. Bill Huizenga, a Michigan Republican first elected in 2010. “He’s a man of his word.”