House Speaker Paul Ryan said the huge turnout of voters in both New Hampshire and Iowa for both parties shows people are eager to replace President Obama and the “bitter polarization” of his ideas.
“They can’t wait to move past a president who disregards their anxiety and glosses over their challenges that they face every single day,” said Ryan, R-Wis.
Ryan blasted Obama’s fiscal 2017 budget proposal, which arrived on Capitol Hill Tuesday, by calling it “a manual for the progressive left’s vision: higher taxes, more debt, bigger government.”
Republicans in the House and Senate plan to skip the customary hearing on Obama’s spending blueprint. But House Republicans are struggling to unite around their own budget proposal, which they hope to produce by the end of February.
Some conservatives want to reduce spending levels that the president and House and Senate lawmakers set in 2015, while other GOP lawmakers hope to increase military spending beyond an established topline number.
Ryan said he believes the House will stick to the $1.07 trillion spending limit established in 2015, which he said will allow the House and Senate to consider and pass 12 appropriations bills rather than being forced to take up a last-minute omnibus measure.
“We are going to appropriate to these numbers because we have agreed on these numbers,” Ryan said.
For now, Ryan said, the GOP is engaged in “the same kind of family conversation about how to proceed with the budget that we have every year. I’m confident we will get this figured out.”
