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Paul Ryan sets conditions to run for House speaker

Xinhua, October 21, 2015 Adjust font size:

After weeks of reluctance, Representative Paul Ryan relented for the first time Tuesday that he would run for House speaker if all Republican factions within the House embrace him as their consensus candidate by week's end.

"What I told members (House Republicans) is ... if I can truly be a unifying figure, then I will gladly serve. And if I am not unifying, that is fine as well. I will be happy to stay where I am," said Ryan at a press conference.

Ryan's conditions for a candidacy also included a change of House rules that would remove the ability of any House members to seek a vote to vacate the speaker's chair, as what happened to House Speaker John Boehner last month.

Earlier this month, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy abruptly dropped bid to replace outgoing Boehner moments before House Republicans started voting for the party's nomination, thrusting House Republican leadership into uncertainty.

Like Boehner's abrupt announcement of resignation from Congress last month, McCarthy's sudden drop of bid highlighted how the insurgence of a relatively small group of hard-line conservatives within the Republican Party challenges the party establishment.

The hard-line Republicans, who came to Washington on the conservative Tea Party wave of 2010, become the decisive factor in determining who would be the next House speaker in spite of their complaints of the powerlessness and frustration deriving from House Republican leadership's reluctance to consider their hard-line conservative agenda.

Without the votes of House Democrats, any Republican nominee cannot afford to lose more than 29 votes of House Republicans in the final vote.

Whoever inherits the speaker's chair will also inherit a series of fiscal deadlines.

The U.S. Treasure Department had said earlier that the federal government was taking in less revenue than it had anticipated and therefore must increase its borrowing authority by Nov. 3.

Congress will have to pass the spending bill for the current fiscal year by Dec. 11, the date for the current stopgap bill to expire. Endi