On Thursday, House Representative and Speaker of the House John Boehner officially passes the responsibility of his position to House Representative Paul Ryan. Boehner served as the 63rd Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. He worked for decades to push to have a pope attend a joint session of Congress and the day after Pope Francis spoke to Congress, Boehner woke up, said his prayers, and decided, “Today,’s the day I’m going to do it. It’s as simple as that.” Boehner ran into significant discord with Tea Party leader and extreme conservatives, to the point they loathed his compromise and to the point they threatened to vote against needed legislation.
The logical successor, Kevin McCarthy, quickly took himself out of the running saying, “If we’re going to unite and be strong, we need a new face to help do that.” The new face ended up being the one-time vice-presidential runner Paul Ryan, who vowed to give everyone a chance to speak, “We are going to respect the people by representing the people.” By year’s end, however, Ryan and others had to join to create a spending package to avoid a government shutdown and ram it through Congress. Ryan says his focus will remain on fiscal responsibility and building small businesses.