Outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), who is retiring from Congress after 20 years in office, has been keeping a remarkably low profile when you consider that we are approaching the end of a hotly contested midterm election season. Sure, he's been on the campaign trail, rallying for House Republican candidates in several states. But it's been a workmanlike performance and certainly nothing to remotely attract national attention.
One feels he would love to criticize the president more, seeing that Trump's brand of populist nationalism has swept Ryan's GOP Establishment clear from the field. Yet, when he refuted Trump's vow to ban birthright citizenship via executive order, he did so on lofty Constitutional grounds. Trump blasted the remarks, yet Ryan refrained from responding in kind. He has also attacked the "tribalism" he sees in politics today – a clear shot at grassroots love for Trump – in a lofty, Big Thoughts-style that seems more at home in a corporate boardroom than a political forum.
Aha! Perhaps Ryan is so clearly trying not to ruffle any feathers as he prepares to make his way out the door because he knows what's waiting for him down the road: a very nice payday for years to come.
Their Kind of Guy
The worst-kept secret in The Swamp is that Ryan, like all prominent retiring members of Congress, has a windfall waiting for him on K Street.
“He’s very well-connected to the business community and he’s a substance-based thinker on policy issues,” Ivan Adler, principal at executive recruiting firm McCormick Group Inc., told Bloomberg in April when Ryan announced his retirement. "That kind of experience will earn a premium. “He’s a million-dollars-plus easily, and people will be glad to pay it.”
Call me cynical, but somehow I think the "well-connected" part of the equation is a little bit more of a factor than the "substance-based thinker" part. Ryan, the man who never saw an "entitlement" program for American citizens that didn't need serious reforming, probably won't be speaking out too harshly any time soon on this entitlement pipeline running between retiring D.C. pols and big business bucks.
The worst-kept secret in The Swamp is that Ryan, like all prominent retiring members of Congress, has a windfall waiting for him on K Street.
Ryan will have to wait a measly year to begin directly lobbying Congress, as per rules for retiring House members. But he can trade in some of his chips and join a corporate board right away; a lucrative path followed by dozens of former members of Congress before him.
Before the 2016 election, 64 former members of Congress were on boards of directors at an average salary of more than $330,000. “The kind of board that [Ryan] would go after would probably pay between $250,000 and $300,000 a year and he could probably get three or four of them,” Fred Foulkes, a professor of at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, told Bloomberg. “There would be dozens that would like to have him, particularly companies that have part of their business in key relationships with certain parts of government.”
Establishment Pension
In many ways, Ryan's exit mirrors that of former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, though without the suddenness of departure. After Cantor was defeated by Dave Brat (R-VA) in a stunning House primary upset in June 2014, he checked out immediately, stepping down from his leadership and resigning from Congress altogether by the end of August.
Despite asserting that he had no interest in lobbying, Cantor ended up landing a lucrative gig at Wall Street investment banking company Moelis & Co. The guy who said he wanted "to play a role in the public debate" instead of lobbying, pocketed $3.4 million a year to open a Washington office for Moelis. I wonder what a highly connected former congressman could do for a Wall Street firm's brand new D.C. office that's worth that kind of money?
The contract was payment for future services influencing congressional buddies, no doubt, but it was also payment for past services rendered. Just like Ryan, Cantor was a leading establishment GOP figure who toiled endlessly for "immigration reform," i.e., open borders, supported every war a military contractor could make a dime from, and backed every globalist trade deal that lined multinational corporate pockets while hurting American workers.
When Cantor lost, it was time to cash in. There was no way he wasn't going to. The same will go for Ryan. This is what he's worked for all these years. And now that he's been beaten by Trump every bit as thoroughly as Cantor was by Brat in 2014 (even though he kept his own congressional seat) there is no reason for Ryan to stay in this part of the game anymore. Like Cantor, he'll say things like "I'm a policy guy" who "wants to stay involved." Then he'll head to the cashier's window, just as Cantor did.
So that's probably why we won't see him ruffling many feathers on his way out. He won't make a lot of waves. Why should he? There's a pile of gold waiting for Paul Ryan at the end of his Swamp rainbow. And he is going to take it. He earned it all some time ago.
