WASHINGTON (AP) – Outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan is bemoaning America’s “broken politics.” He’s also using a farewell speech to say that Washington’s failure to overhaul costly federal benefit programs is “our greatest unfinished business.”
The Wisconsin Republican is ending his two-decade House career. He says in prepared remarks that the country’s problems are solvable “if our politics will allow it.”
Ryan’s address comes Wednesday as the window closes on a tumultuous two years of GOP control of government dominated by President Donald Trump. It also comes six weeks after Democrats captured House control, which begins Jan. 3.
Under Ryan, Congress approved the biggest tax cuts in decades and boosted defense spending. But annual federal deficits are surging and the GOP failed to scuttle former President Barack Obama’s health care law.