WASHINGTON -- Newly elected U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said Republicans will be a more focused, open and productive force under his leadership in an effort to become a more effective check on President Barack Obama.
On the first weekend since taking the reins from John Boehner of Ohio, the Wisconsin Republican said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press that he will offer a clear agenda on the economy, health care and foreign policy. On CNN's State of the Union, Ryan also suggested that hard-line Republicans must wait to try to defund Planned Parenthood until after Congress passes a new government spending bill in December.
Ryan inherits a Republican conference that's divided over whether to cooperate with Obama and Democrats in Congress to forge agreements -- such as the two-year budget deal passed Wednesday by the House -- or instead use their power over the nation's purse to try to force policy concessions from the president.
"We do not like the direction that the president is taking the country," Ryan said. "That means we have to be a proposition party. We have to be the alternative party."
Ryan, 45, appeared on five talk shows Sunday, promising to hold more open discussions about emerging legislation, a key demand of the House Freedom Caucus of hard-line Republicans. Ryan said he wanted to have the House "working like it was intended to work."
Ryan ruled out a comprehensive overhaul of the immigration system while Obama is in office.
The new leader of the Republican-controlled House said in several interviews Sunday that he will not work with Obama on immigration because the president went around Congress with an executive order to shield from deportation millions of people living in the U.S. illegally.
"I don't think we can trust the president on this issue," Ryan said on Meet the Press and other programs. "I do not believe we should advance comprehensive immigration legislation with a president who has proven himself untrustworthy on this issue."
The decision puts off any prospect of addressing a comprehensive immigration overhaul until at least 2017 -- after the presidential race and Obama's departure from office. It leaves the legislation stalled in the House and without a chance of being revived in the Senate.
For Ryan, the move removes the prospects of a clash with the same House conservatives who made John Boehner's life difficult and helped push Boehner into retirement. Ryan was a proponent of the stalled comprehensive immigration bill, and conservatives had been concerned that he would try to revive it as speaker.
"I can't pick up where John [Boehner] left off. It has to be done differently," Ryan said on CBS' Face the Nation.
The message from Ryan, who was elected on Thursday, signaled an antagonism toward the White House that both echoed his predecessor, Boehner, and is likely to appeal to the conservatives within the party that forced the previous speaker's resignation.
When asked Sunday to comment on Ryan's statements about immigration, a White House spokesman referred back to Friday's news briefing, in which Josh Earnest, the press secretary, called Ryan's stance -- which had been reported based on private meetings -- "a source of deep disappointment."
Republicans also "need to be very clear about [what] it is we can and cannot achieve, and not set expectations that we know we can't reach" because of opposition by Obama and Senate Democrats, Ryan said on CNN.
A threat by members of the House Freedom Caucus to shut down the federal government in an effort to defund Planned Parenthood contributed to Boehner's decision to resign. The issue may arise again before the latest short-term government spending bill expires Dec. 11.
Ryan said that even though he thinks Planned Parenthood shouldn't get a "red cent" from the government, a new special committee set up to investigate the reproductive health-care provider should be allowed to do its work before lawmakers make a decision.
"By not controlling the process so tightly held here in the speakership, by letting it go forward, I don't know what the outcome is going to be," Ryan said.
Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in an emailed statement, "Even Paul Ryan, a lifelong anti-abortion conservative, knows that his caucus's obsession with defunding Planned Parenthood has become an embarrassment for congressional Republicans."
Ryan said that under his leadership the appropriation process, in which Congress funds the government by passing 12 separate spending bills, would be back on track. Some Republicans have criticized Boehner for failing to pass appropriations bills and being forced to negotiate budget deals with Obama.
"I don't think leadership should be trying to, you know, covet power and write legislation," he said on Fox News Sunday. "I think I want to have a more participatory process, which is really what the founders envisioned the House to look like. And that is something that so many of us, myself included, have been concerned about the way this place has been run."
Boehner, interviewed on CNN, said he "laid every ounce of Catholic guilt I could on him" to persuade Ryan to run for speaker.
"It was obvious to me that he was the right person for the job, and I had to do everything I could to convince him," Boehner said.
One of Ryan's demands in agreeing to seek the speakership was that he be allowed to continue spending weekends with his family in Janesville, Wis., instead of traveling around the country raising funds for fellow Republicans. Still, he said on NBC that his commitment to family doesn't mean he would support paid family leave legislation.
"Because I love my children and I want to be home on Sundays and Saturdays like most people, doesn't mean I'm for taking money from hardworking taxpayers to create a brand new entitlement program," Ryan said.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in a statement Sunday that Ryan "is in a unique position to take action on behalf of millions of other moms and dads."
"Instead he shirks responsibility and brushes the issue away by raising a favorite specter of the right -- government mandates," said Wasserman Schultz, a House member from Florida.
Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the second-ranking House Democrat, said on CBS that members of his party are willing to work with Ryan on the nation's problems, although they disagree on some of his major proposals.
"We're not for changing Social Security as it exists today. We're for strengthening it," Hoyer said. "We're not for making Medicare a voucher program. So some of those bold visions that he talks about are things that are worthy of a good debate."
What concerns Ryan, he said on Fox News Sunday, is the congressional Republicans' focus on tactics, rather than what he called "vision." He said Republicans had been "too timid on policy. We've been too timid on vision.
"We have none," Ryan said. "We have to have a vision and offer an alternative to this country so that they can see that if we get a chance to lead, if we get the presidency, and if we keep Congress, this is what it will look like. This is how we'll fix the problems that working families are facing."
Clashing with Obama over an issue as complex and volatile as comprehensive immigration reform, Ryan suggested, is not helpful for the GOP now.
He said it's possible to get smaller immigration-related policy passed.
"If we believe and have consensus on things like border enforcement and interior security, then fine," he said on ABC's This Week.
The new speaker said he didn't intend to take a more combative tack with Republicans in the Senate. "Throwing Republicans under the bus is not in my job description," he said.
The speaker said on ABC that he's staying neutral on the presidential race, although he stands by previous criticism of Republican contender Donald Trump's comment that Mexican immigrants were rapists and were bringing drugs into the U.S.
"What really matters is not the personality, but the policy," Ryan said.
Ryan, who was the Republican Party's 2012 vice presidential nominee, was careful not to wade into discussion around the fight for the Republican nomination, saying that he would remain neutral until the party chooses its candidate. The Republican presidential aspirants, he added, have offered a model for the kind of policy alternatives he hopes to see in the House.
"I looked at that stage and said every one of these people would be a far better president than Hillary Clinton," he said on ABC.
On CNN, Ryan said the idea that taking the difficult job of speaker may end any chance that he'll be able to run for president "doesn't really bother me."
"If I really wanted to be president, I would have run in this cycle for the presidency. I had the chance and opportunity to do so," he said. "So, I'm perfectly happy and content with this decision."
Information for this article was contributed by Jeff Plungis and Billy House of Bloomberg News, Nicholas Fandos of The New York Times and staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 11/02/2015