Republicans in the US House of Representatives on Wednesday nominated US Representative Paul Ryan to become the chamber’s next speaker, hoping he can lead them out of weeks of disarray and point them toward accomplishments they can highlight in next year’s elections.
The 45-year-old Ryan was his party’s 2012 vice presidential nominee and is considered a telegenic spokesman for conservative priorities. If elected speaker, he would assume one of the most powerful political offices in the US and a job that puts him second in line of succession to become president.
Ryan won on a secret ballot of the House’s 247 Republicans.
Outgoing US House Speaker John Boehner unexpectedly announced his resignation last month. He came under pressure from hardline conservatives who considered him too timid in challenging US President Barack Obama and too autocratic in punishing Republican lawmakers who defied him.
The full House was expected to elect Ryan as speaker yesterday.
The Republicans’ nomination of Ryan came as bipartisan leaders pushed a two-year budget truce toward approval in the House.
The agreement, eventually approved 266-167, must still pass the US Senate. It would raise the government’s borrowing limit through March 2017, averting an unprecedented default just days away. It also would set the budget of the federal government for the next two years, lifting onerous spending caps and steering away from the brinkmanship and shutdown threats that have haunted the US Congress for years.
Most of the “no” votes were from Republicans, but 79 Republican lawmakers voted for approval.
Republican leaders hope that both of Wednesday’s milestones will transform their party’s recent chaos into calm before next year’s presidential and congressional campaigns.
Democratic and Republican leaders had urged lawmakers to back the budget agreement, which would resolve fights over both military and domestic spending as well as federal borrowing until early 2017. Expectations were for a final Senate approval by next week, even as hard-right conservatives and farm-state lawmakers arrayed against the deal.
Hours before the vote, Ryan said he would support the bill because it makes “meaningful reforms” that strengthen safety net programs like Social Security and provides sufficient resources for the military.
“What has been produced will go a long way toward relieving the uncertainty hanging over us,” Ryan said in a written statement.
At a Wednesday morning closed-door meeting, Ryan had told House Republicans what he would not do as speaker.
“I don’t plan to be Caesar, calling all the shots around here,” US Representative Matt Salmon reported Ryan said after the session.
That seemed to be a reference to demands hardline conservatives have made to transfer more power over legislation from House leaders to rank-and-file lawmakers.
Those conservatives have said the secret negotiations by which leaders crafted the budget deal typified departing Boehner’s top-down approach to legislating, and Ryan on Tuesday said that that process “stinks.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing