In his first speech from the chair, newly minted House Speaker Paul Ryan established what he's calling the Republican "motto":
Which is pretty rich, considering his new chief of staff is a high-level corporate lobbyist who has lobbied for pretty much everything corporate America has championed—especially the financial services and telecommunications industries—from protecting overseas tax havens to fighting net neutrality. It's also pretty rich considering what solidified Ryan's position in the GOP as a supposed wonk: budget proposals that would decimate safety net and social insurance programs while giving big tax breaks to the wealthy.
Beginning with his first "path to prosperity," in 2011, Ryan wanted to gut Medicaid, as well as slashing the budgets food stamps, low-income housing, Pell Grants, and other programs, as well as repeal Obamacare and its subsidies. And, of course, ending Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher program. Meanwhile, he wanted to give people making more than $1 million an average tax cut of $125,000 a year.
He reupped that plan in 2012, and in 2013 and in 2014 (with the addition of gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and raising the tax cut for millionaires to $200,000). He wasn't chairman of the Budget Committee this year, but that didn't stop his successor from releasing the same plan.
So when Ryan talks opportunity for everyone, you can be sure he's limiting the definition of everyone he's always been looking out for—corporations and the wealthy. That's not going to change now that he's speaker, he's just going to have even more opportunity to push his dystopian vision for America's future.