And, he has won. For now.!
House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisc.) announced this week that he will not run for re-election later this year, bringing down the curtain on his long career of antagonism toward the plight of the nation’s poor and disadvantaged people.
Though Ryan’s public persona has been characterized, off-and-on, as something of a serious and deep thinkeron issues related to poverty, taxation, and welfare policy, his record — and now legacy — in public life is one of consistent cruelty. For the entirety of his nearly 20-year career in the House and, especially, since holding the Speaker’s gavel since 2016, Ryan’s single-minded purpose in governance has been to seek and destroy federal support for the poor.
Ryan came to Congress in 1998, pledging to bring discipline and reform to Social Security and other federal welfare programs that he’s hated since his college days.
Ironically, Ryan owes, in great part, his personal and political success to the Social Security payment he and his family received following his 55-year-old father’s death, when Ryan was 16 years old. In other words, the welfare-cutting Speaker got his start in life by earning a B.A. in economics and political science at the Miami University of Ohio, with money provided by his late father’s welfare payments.
That was just the start of Ryan’s hypocrisy.
In 2014, Ryan displayed his callous disregard for the suffering of poor and hungry Americans when he argued against progressive budget proposals that urged giving low-income students free lunches. “The left is making a big mistake here,” Ryan said in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.“What they’re offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul.”
