They used to call Mario Cuomo, Hamlet on the Hudson for his extended dithering about whether or not he would run for president. Paul Ryan also displayed a bit of the melancholy Dane in his theatrical reluctance to become Speaker of the House. Few people who have sought power so assiduously turn it down when it’s offered. Clearly, he was simply seeking better terms, which he managed to extort. And Trump thinks he can make a deal!
Some of his feigned reluctance was rational, of course. The crazy wing of Ryan’s party which used to include him before it got even crazier, has made the House ungovernable and, as the shattered tenure of John Boehner showed, has made the speakership about as desirable a job as Captain of the Titanic. Ryan obviously nurses ambitions for bigger things – like the presidency – so a job tantamount to a suicide mission might not be regarded as a career builder.
Still, some of his posturing was absurd. He didn’t want the speakership to be so all-consuming that it made it impossible to be an involved and committed father. He demanded that his weekends be free for family. Since speakers try to run the House about three days a week from noon Tuesday to noon Friday that ought not to have been a problem. But that schedule is not so members can be homebodies but so they can hit the rubber chicken fund-raising circuit. And the Speaker is the money-grubber in chief. Clearly Ryan wanted to deputize someone else for the seamy work of begging and/or promising quids pro quo.
That achieved, Ryan ought to be home free. Since 2001, the House has been in session an average of 137 days a year and the number is dropping each year. In 2014, the House worked 114 days. In 2013, the House was in session for a total of 982 hours, working about 28 hours a week on the few weeks they actually showed up. Many weeks go by, and in election years several whole months, when the body is in recess. People in normal jobs work 40 hours minimum, often for 50 weeks a year, so they put in over twice as much time as their representative.
Admittedly, committee hearings go on constantly and the drafting, researching and horse trading of legislation is incessant, but much of that work is left to eager-beaver staffers while members spend their time hitting up donors, pressing the flesh, and preening on television. Many Americans who make less than Ryan’s $174,000 a year work longer hours in backbreaking jobs for less and see their families only intermittently.
If Ryan wants to be close to his kids, he could do the obvious. Move his wife and children to a nice Washington suburb where the schools and cultural amenities would be vastly superior to those on offer in Janesville, Wisconsin where the chattel currently reside. But members who import their families and settle down where they do the nation’s business are now accused of having gone native and lost touch with where they came from. So they are obliged to pretend they hate Washington and jet home as soon as the gavel adjourns a session, then fly back in the nick of time to cast the first vote of the next grueling three-day work week. Thus is hypocrisy institutionalized.
It’s a silly charade, but the travel for members is not as onerous as that endured by other road warriors who have to travel for their jobs. Members get preferential treatment at airports (my Senator has his own front-row, reserved slot at the airport parking lot), breeze through security checks, travel at taxpayer expense, and regularly hitch a ride on the plush corporate jets of grateful constituents.
Ryan’s wife, Janna, is pleased to play the Midwestern, stay-at-home mom role, though she is a Wellesley graduate with a George Washington Law School degree. She practiced as a tax attorney and lobbied for the medical and insurance industries before assuming her supporting part in the Ryan drama. But lest we fall for an image contrived to please voters in Wisconsin’s First Congressional District, she is also an heiress whose trust fund of several million is the couple’s largest single asset. No doubt the structure of the trust and her tax attorney chops permit her to minimize the tax bite. Again this contrasts rather sharply with the lives of average wage-earning working families, both spouses of which have to man an oar to keep the family boat economically afloat.
Advocates for issue affecting children and families have praised Ryan for being willing to say that job pressures shouldn’t crowd out the duty of fathers and mothers to be present in the lives of their children. But it is relatively easy for him to say. Investing the trust wisely would probably allow both parents to stay home fulltime, if that’s what they want. But, of course, sacrifices must be made since the country needs him.
O does it? Some have also noticed that what Ryan thinks is important for his family is not reflected in the political positions he advocates. He opposes family leave and would abolish the minimum wage. He has voted against equal pay for equal work for women. His budgets have sought to terminate legislation that provides help for families and children such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program. His budget would reduce health care services under Medicaid. It would raise taxes on struggling families earning less than $75,000 while cutting taxes in half for those earning over $600,000. You know, people with trust funds.
It’s nice that Speaker Ryan wants to spend time with his kids and was in a position to demand changes to his job description to accommodate his preferred lifestyle. Most people don’t have that luxury. They don’t have lifestyles but lives that are often hard and getting harder. It is too bad the policies Ryan has dedicated his life to enacting are not designed to make a family life such as his easier to achieve for so many of the people that the Speaker of the House is paid to represent.