Donald Trump closed his successful Presidential campaign with a call to “Drain the Swamp”.
And central to that pledge was Trump’s call for a Constitutional amendment enforcing term limits on members of Congress.
But already, House Speaker Paul Ryan is undermining the President-elect.
On the campaign trail, Trump proposed setting limits of 3 two-year terms for members of the House and 2 six-year terms for members of the Senate.
This would force 32 Senators and 226 members of the House into retirement.
Some argue that term limits prevent members from entrenching themselves in Washington, where they become susceptible to the influences of special interest lobbyists and big businesses, like the banks.
Speaker Ryan nominally claims he supports term limits, but he has revealed his real strategy to kill Trump’s proposal – inaction.
Politico reports:
“Paul Ryan on Thursday said he supports Donald Trump’s call for term limits on lawmakers — but the House speaker stopped short of committing to passing such a bill.
“I’ve always supported term limits,” the Wisconsin Republican said. “I’ve long been a fan of term limits. I don’t know where other members stand, but I’ve always been in favor of that.”
As part of his “drain the swamp” mantra, Trump in mid-October floated a pitch to enact a constitutional amendment capping House members to three terms, or six years in office, and senators to two terms, or 12 years.
“The time for congressional term limits has finally arrived,” Trump said at one of his rallies. “Not only will it end our government corruption, but we will end the economic stagnation that we are in right now.”
Ryan, however, stopped short of saying he would seek to pass legislation to make such a change, adding that he’d “leave it up to others to decide that” and pointing specifically to the House Judiciary Committee.”
As Speaker of the House, Ryan has absolute control over what can come up for a vote.
Saying he will leave the matter up to the committee is his way of burying the proposal.
This isn’t the first time Ryan has gone out of his way to undermine President-elect Trump’s ability in order to implement his own agenda.
Ryan has already gone on record stating there will not be deportations as part of immigration enforcement.
Breitbart reports him saying:
“We are not planning on erecting a deportation force. Donald Trump’s not planning on that,” Ryan told CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union.
“I think we should put people’s minds at ease: That is not what our focus is. That is not what we’re focused on. We’re focused on securing the border. We think that’s first and foremost, before we get into any other immigration issue, we’ve got to know who’s coming and going into the country– we’ve got to secure the border,” Ryan said.
Many conservatives are worried Ryan’s longstanding support for open borders and mass immigration will run counter to the President-elect’s message of tough border enforcement and ending illegal immigration.
In fact, much of the donor class agenda that Ryan backs was repudiated by Trump’s election.
Will Ryan reluctantly work with the President-elect on his plans to secure the border and “Drain the Swamp”?
Or will he work behind the scenes to kill the President-elect’s policy proposals?
