WASHINGTON — House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Sunday that, through compromise, Republicans have advanced key priorities since he took office just a month and a half ago and readied themselves to reopen contentious fights over the Affordable Care Act and funding for Planned Parenthood when Congress returns early next year.
Voicing optimism after the passage of a $1.8 trillion spending and tax cut package Friday, Ryan acknowledged that divided government means that Republicans were not in a position to achieve all their goals but they had succeeded in bringing relief to US taxpayers and business owners.
"We fought for as much as we could get," Ryan said in an interview on the NBC's "Meet the Press." "We advanced our priorities and principles. Not every single one of them, but many of them. And then we're going to pick up next year and pick up where we left off and keep going for more."
President Obama quickly signed the spending and tax measure into law before both houses of Congress departed Washington for the year-end holiday recess.
Ryan praised several measures in the omnibus spending package, including the end to a 40-year ban on crude oil exports, funding cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, and billions in tax breaks.
He also praised his colleagues for passing a multiyear highway funding bill and another to replace No Child Left Behind, a 2002 law that had given the federal government a greater role in K-12 education.
While congressional Democrats and the White House claimed victory last week for stalling Republican legislative efforts to cut funding for Planned Parenthood and dismantle the Affordable Care Act, Ryan said those issues will be atop the Republican Party's agenda when the House returns from recess.
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, in his own television appearance Sunday lauded what he called an "extraordinarily accomplished first year for the new Senate majority" even amid the realities of divided government.
Increased domestic spending advocated by Democrats and included in the package was necessary given Republicans' desire to increase spending on defense, McConnell said, deflecting criticism from deficit-conscious conservatives.
House minority leader Nancy Pelosi last week credited a "desperate thirst'' among Republicans to lift the ban on exporting oil for big Democratic victories in the budget bill, including the blocking of efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and winning a five-year extension of tax credits for renewable energy.
Describing her first negotiations with Ryan, Pelosi said Republicans wanted the ban lifted so badly that "they gave away the store.''
The oil export ban was imposed in 1976 after the Arab Oil Embargo inflicted a price shock on the US economy. Pelosi and others in her caucus opposed lifting the ban, warning that it would send middle-class jobs overseas because oil producers would ship crude abroad and bypass domestic refineries.
But Pelosi calculated that Democrats had more to gain in the legislation than they lost, and ultimately persuaded her members to go along.
Pelosi sold the bill by arguing that Democrats would be able to fend off hundreds of GOP riders, such as efforts to undo financial reforms enacted after the 2008 financial crisis.