�鶹Ů��

Republicans nominated Rep. Paul Ryan as their choice for House speaker Wednesday, coalescing around a fiscal conservative who has vowed to move the party past years of infighting with a more open and inclusive approach to running the chamber. (Hughes, 10/28)

A final floor vote is set for Thursday, almost ensuring the Wisconsin congressman will replace retiring Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who called it quits rather than continue clashing with hard-right lawmakers. Behind closed doors, signs of GOP unrest remain. Ryan won 200 votes, well over a majority of the House GOP, but less than the 218 he will need in the upcoming floor vote. Still, even those who voted against him believe he will prevail Thursday. (Mascaro, 10/28)

Among the party’s larger group of mainstream conservatives, there was widespread relief that weeks of uncertainty over who would succeed Boehner ended with Ryan agreeing to take the job. There was also open excitement about the type of leader Ryan might be. Ryan has spent much of the past decade burnishing his credentials as a conservative ideas man, from his 2008 “Roadmap for America’s Future” though his four-year tenure as House Budget Committee chairman, his 2012 vice-presidential nomination and his ascent earlier this year to chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. (DeBonis, 10/28)

Mr. Ryan also could highlight more of his party’s vision for strengthening the fraying federal safety net, particularly Medicare and the troubled Social Security Disability Insurance program. But those changes are politically fraught. In the face of liberal criticism, Mr. Ryan’s own ideas for revamping Medicare have evolved in recent years from establishing an individual voucher system to enacting a less-sweeping change known as “premium support” in which the government pays insurers on behalf of enrollees. He has also delayed some cost controls in recent versions of his Medicare overhaul. (McKinnon, 10/29)

[Retiring Speaker John] Boehner delivered Mr. Ryan from his most vexing conflicts by negotiating an $80 billion bipartisan budget agreement that would increase spending for the military and some popular domestic programs, lift the debt ceiling and avert premium increases of as much as 50 percent for millions on Medicare right before an election. ... But the relief may be short-lived. The budget deal creates room for the House and Senate appropriations committees to draft a huge spending bill for the current fiscal year that can increase spending on defense as well as politically popular programs like medical research, federal law enforcement and wildfire suppression. But the spending bills already drafted are replete with conservative policy prescriptions, from crippling Mr. Obama’s signature health care law to blocking his climate change and financial regulations. Mr. Ryan will have to decide how far to push that clash with the president. (Steinhauer, 10/29)

But despite criticism that he was a weak speaker who had to regularly cajole his conference rather than dictate marching orders, Mr. Boehner, a longtime fiscal conservative, can claim significant success in influencing federal budgetary policy even if it took a rolling series of near economic calamities to do so. He won $2 trillion in spending reductions in a 2011 budget deal, set Medicare on a course to save $3 trillion over the long term with a bipartisan deal earlier this year and helped preserve most of the tax cuts enacted during the George W. Bush administration. (Hulse, 10/29)