Five years ago this month — on the night the Democrats passed Obamacare through the House without a single Republican vote — Paul Ryan proclaimed on the House floor, “This moment may mark a temporary conclusion of the health-care debate, but its place in history has not yet been decided.  If this passes, the quest to reclaim the American idea is not over.  The fight to reapply our founding principles is not finished.  It is just a steeper hill to climb, and it is a climb that we will make!”

Americans’ opposition to Obamacare cost Democrats 63 House seats that fall (the most they had lost while also losing control of the chamber since the 19th century) and put Ryan’s party in the majority.  Now chairman of Ways and Means, he and his fellow committee chairmen Fred Upton (Energy and Commerce) and John Kline (Workforce) have just penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that will help America continue its climb back from that dark night in March 2010.