House GOP officially quits after failing to keep America open

Republicans ended their eight years in control of the House of Representatives in a predictable way: complete and total failure. One of Paul Ryan’s final acts as House speaker was — fittingly — a spineless capitulation to Trump resulting in the ongoing government shutdown.

On Wednesday, outgoing Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) released a memo declaring there will be no more votes in the 115th Congress. Ryan was nowhere to be seen on the last day of his tenure as a decidedly failed House speaker overseeing a government he helped bring to a screeching halt before leaving office.

The responsibility of getting the government back up and running — after Trump stomped his feet and demanded a government shutdown, and his GOP gave it to him — will now fall to the 116th Congress, when California’s Nancy Pelosi will reclaim her position this week as speaker of the House. Pelosi will lead a Democratic majority that ousted at least 40 Republicans during the 2018 midterm elections. The transition of power will return Democrats to the majority for the first time since 2010.

In the eight years of House control, Republicans will be most remembered for an almost-decade long fight to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. They failed. They failed more than 50 times. They failed even when Republicans controlled the House, Senate, and White House.

Aside from tilting at that windmill, Republicans did their best to serve their corporate masters on Wall Street. The 2017 tax scam added trillions to the national deficit so that rich corporations could pad the bank accounts of wealthy investors all while leaving middle-class Americans out in the cold.

Ryan, a fake deficit hawk turned Trump lackey, took over as speaker in 2015 when the fiscal year ended with a $439 billion deficit. He retires with the deficit at $890 billion, and the federal government shut down by his party

Democrats come in to the majority with an ambitious agenda, including legislation focused on issues like voting rights and strengthening our democracy. New committee chairs are also ready to hold Trump and his corrupt cabinet accountable for their actions, something Republicans refused to do for the past two years.

But before Democrats can implement the agenda Americans voted for, Pelosi and her team will spend their first day in power doing the job Republicans failed to accomplish: funding the federal government so it can actually function and cleaning up the mess Ryan and his party have left behind.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.