OK, Enough Trump. What's Going on in the House of

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OK, Enough Trump. What's Going on in the House of Representatives?

*Monkeyhouse.



GETTY ALEX WONG

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
DEC 2, 2016

While El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago was off to take his triumphant parade through the Midwest in celebration of how he helped Indiana bribe Carrier into leaving half its jobs there for the moment, I thought I'd walk away from the din emanating from Camp Runamuck and take a look at what the House of Representatives is going to be like when things really get rolling in 2017.

Bad idea. Such a bad idea.

First of all, on Thursday, Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin, slung some completely predictable shite from his gob regarding Medicare and how he plans to save it by having you shop for a health plan when you're 90.

Don't worry. Old folks are learning the Internet all the time.

From TPM:

Ryan told reporters at a press conference that Congress is "going to have to do things to preserve" Medicare, again claiming that the program "is on a path to going bankrupt."

The speaker said that changes to Medicare would not effect people "in or near retirement," and he said that a proposal could allow people to either choose among a selection of insurance plans or stick with the current traditional program.

If he had the guts to follow what he truly believes, he'd blow up Medicare entirely and push his vouchers through with principled arguments.

But he knows he'd have members of his caucus throwing themselves off the Capitol dome if he tried that, so we get this tap dance about how people like, well, me don't have to worry. This is also why his plan is inevitably described as "short on details." It is short on a lot of things—balls, most notably.

But this really wasn't news. Ryan's been playing this game since he was an ambitious climber of a congressional aide. And, besides, there were even worse things happening on the monkeyhouse side of the Capitol. You may recall that transparent tool Jason Chaffetz promised that his Oversight Committee would be launching investigations of Hillary Rodham Clinton as soon as the polls closed in Hawaii.

Now that we've elected a walking conspiracy to defraud, however, Chaffetz has decided that his Oversight Committee will be overlooking a great many things.

"I will when there is an allegation of wrongdoing. But he hasn't even been sworn in yet," Chaffetz said Thursday in an interview. "At least let the guy actually become a federal employee before you start screaming for investigations."

This must've set off wild guffawing in the offices of the Clinton Foundation.

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