House Speaker Paul Ryan said Wednesday that he’s been planning for a unified Republican government for the last year, and that the GOP will have a busy 2017 implementing as much of its agenda as it can.
“What I told our committees a year ago was assume we get the White House and Congress and, come 2018, what do you want to have accomplished for the country?” the Wisconsin Republican said on CNBC Wednesday.
It was a big picture look that not many saw coming before Election Night, but Ryan said GOP plans that have been in the works for the last year will now allow Republican lawmakers to move forward on many legislative fronts at once.
First up will be repealing the Affordable Care Act, Ryan said. However, it’s not going to happen all at once.
“The point we’re trying to make is this law is failing very, very incredibly and we’ve got to replace this law so we don’t just pull the rug out from people,” he said.
Other top priorities for the Republican caucus will be repealing regulations handed down from the Obama administration and securing the border, Ryan said.
Ryan said he’s working with Trump’s transition team to figure out how to repeal as many of Obama’s executive orders and regulations as possible. The transition team and House officials are going through Obama’s regulations and seeing which ones Trump can repeal and which ones must be repealed by Congress.
Given that many of President Obama’s victories in policy came through regulations, executive order and executive actions, Republicans could undo much of his legacy in the first 100 days Trump is in office, Ryan said.
“We have a very, very bold regulatory reform platform that we’re going to be moving on very early in the first part of the year,” he said.
