Paul Ryan said this in 2011 when he was trying to reform entitlement spending. Ultimately, he couldn’t get it done, though he tried and he didn’t let the possibility of losing his job stop him from trying. He did get significant tax reforms passed in 2017, maybe not as many as he would have liked, but a lot more than anybody else had accomplished in a long time or has accomplished since. In 2018, then-House Speaker Ryan decided to retire. Perhaps he felt he couldn’t “be good at this kind of job” anymore. I don’t know. In any case, he was good at it while he was there.
Unfortunately, we don’t have enough people in the Republican Party like this anymore. Instead, they are voting against aid to Ukraine, which would help our national security, too, and voting for silly motions to impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security because they don’t like President Biden’s border policies. It doesn’t matter whether they are doing this because they are scared of Donald Trump or because they think they would lose a primary to the people who tend to vote in primaries. If they are more worried about losing their job than they are about being good at it, then maybe they should find a new job, which they could be good at.
In 1774, Edmund Burke said: “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” Obviously, we are not seeing enough of that in Washington today.
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