WASHINGTON -- Paul Ryan became speaker of the U.S. House on Thursday, a young leader for a fractured Congress.
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"Let's prove ourselves worthy," Ryan urged from the House dais where he was sworn into the job, second in line to the presidency, after an extraordinary month of unrest in Congress.
"Let's be frank: The House is broken," Ryan declared. "We are not settling scores. We are wiping the slate clean."
As Ryan spoke, senators across the Capitol were preparing to cast votes on a broad, two-year budget and debt deal that passed in the House on Wednesday. The deal was engineered largely by outgoing Speaker John Boehner to allow Ryan a fresh start, with the toughest issues already resolved.
The measure was expected to clear an initial legislative hurdle well after midnight in a dead-of-night vote resulting from the Senate's convoluted legislative timetables and delaying tactics by opponents. Many in the Senate's GOP majority planned to vote no, including presidential candidates Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, who canceled campaign events to rush back to Washington to oppose it.
Ryan, 45, is the youngest speaker elected since 1869 and was the Republicans' 2012 vice presidential nominee. He was elected speaker in a roll-call vote on the House floor, with each lawmaker standing in turn to declare his choice.
"California cheese-heads for Paul D. Ryan!" declared one Western lawmaker, Doug LaMalfa, declaring support for Ryan, R-Wis.
The final tally showed 236 votes for Ryan, 184 for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democrats' candidate, and nine for Republican Daniel Webster of Florida.
Webster had been the choice of a group of House Freedom Caucus conservatives. But in the end most Republicans swung behind Ryan, underscoring the strong desire of nearly all members for a fresh start.
With his wife and three children -- Liza, 13, Charlie, 12, and Sam, 10, from Janesville, Wis., -- watching from the gallery, along with former presidential running mate Mitt Romney, Ryan accepted the gavel from Pelosi and pledged a new day for Congress. And without directly mentioning them or the troubles they've caused, he promised to get the GOP's rebels back into the fold.
"We need to let every member contribute -- not once they have earned their stripes but right now," Ryan said. "Open up the process. Let people participate. And they might change their tune. A neglected minority will gum up the works. A respected minority will work in good faith."
Boehner, who started life as an Ohio bartender's son with 11 siblings, cast the final vote for Ryan and said he leaves the House as "the same regular guy that came here."
"This, too, can really happen to you," he said in an emotional farewell address.
He recited a list of his accomplishments, including spending cuts, ending earmarks and preserving the D.C. school voucher program.
"I leave with no regrets, no burdens," he said.
Boehner's parting gift to Ryan was the budget deal revealed Monday night after negotiations among congressional leaders and the White House. After years of brinkmanship over the budget and the debt ceiling, the deal would increase government spending by $80 billion through 2017 and suspend the current $18.1 trillion debt limit through March 2017. After that, it would be reset by the Treasury Department to reflect borrowing over that time.
It will be up to congressional spending committees and Ryan to fill in the details with a package of bills by early December.
Ryan's swearing-in came almost a month after Boehner revealed his plans to resign from Congress at the end of October. He said he had no appetite for a floor vote on his speakership as threatened by conservatives, who contended that he was yielding to President Barack Obama in a government-shutdown fight over Planned Parenthood.
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy was Boehner's likeliest successor but withdrew his name from consideration.
Party leaders turned to Ryan, who initially said he would not run for the position, preferring to continue as chairman of the powerful tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.
Ryan later agreed to seek the job on the condition that he have the support of all major factions of the House GOP, including the Freedom Caucus, and be allowed to cut back on fundraising responsibilities so he could spend time with his family.
Now he begins to serve with the burden of those groups' expectations.
Ryan started off on strong footing with Thursday's vote of confidence. But conservatives served notice that they will be watching to make sure he delivers on his commitments of a House more open to all.
"He won my vote by coming across as a very honest broker and someone we can work with to move the ball forward," said Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., a Freedom Caucus member. "We've had enough conversations with Paul to understand he has a different idea about how to govern going forward."
Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia said: "I have invested a lot of faith in Speaker Ryan's word, and I will expect nothing less than a full return on that investment."
Information for this article was contributed by Erica Werner, Alan Fram, Matthew Daly, Mary Clare Jalonick, Andrew Taylor and Deb Riechmann of The Associated Press; and by Mike DeBonis, Karoun Demirjian, Juliet Eilperin, Paul Kane and Kelsey Snell of The Washington Post.
A Section on 10/30/2015