MGB:_Thank God that Ryan failed. As a disciple of Ayn Rand, he bought into the libertarian ethic that helping the poor made them dependent and that the best social policy was low wage work. I can’t say that I have any desire to work on my pension, aside from writing comments to blogs and Congress, but I earned it by working through my disability. Had I not been able to, as a human being, I still deserved the same kind of money. Indeed, without proceed from divorce, I would be in financial pain that would be undeserved, though Ryan would say it would be an incentive.
I wish him well in his retirement, and with his family cardiac issues, I hope it is longer than expected, but I am glad his agenda was largely unaccomplished. When I was 15, I had the same thoughts about transfering payment for entitlements to states and letting them fully fund them. I grew out of such nonsense, although I would allow cooperatives to opt out of the federal and state taxes supporting them, ideally a subtract value added tax on employers, but only if the employers provided the same services. Ryan would make offering those services at all a personal moral decision. I call such decisions theft from the poor, and so does Christ.
A tax cut is almost inevitable when Republicans take the White House, even if they only take the Senate too. Ryan had little part in shaping this tax cut, which is a shame because he would have eased us into consumption taxes. Instead, he just went along for the ride. The tax cut would be bad for the economy were it not for the deficit, which Ryan agreed to. It is better to borrow the money returned in tax cuts than to allow investment in asset speculation, which ideally is what Ryan wanted but knew he could not get passed an emergent Democratic minority in the Senate. He made the right deal and Trump was too stupid to stop it.
Not running is an act of patriotism at best and partisan cupidity at worst. There may be evidence that Mike Pence was in on the Russia situation. If impeachment happens in 2019, both Trump and Pence could be touched. Ryan staying on through January allows him to keep Pence out of it, allowing the GOP to shoot its own dog and possibly not be destroyed in November.
Will he run for President? I doubt his cardiologist will let him. His family history is so bad he may yet die in office, so we don’t need the snide remarks about why he is leaving.
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