Former U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan spoke to National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care (NIC) on Tues. Oct. 24 where he explained Congress can block a federal nursing home staffing mandate. “The Congressional Review Act gives us [Congress] the ability to pass a law that says that the minimum staffing rule is repealed because it was a bad rule,” said Ryan. “It can’t be filibustered in the Senate. If it passes in the Senate, it happens and it goes away, no matter who the president is. That kind of stuff can happen.”

Former Speaker Ryan noted the challenges to this approach in today’s partisan political climate, noting that aligned interests are needed to control Congress and that specific circumstances would need to fall into place. “But you can repeal recent rules if you have Congress. So, there’s a lot you can do.”

When the moderator commented that this may be an “unsolvable problem” Ryan gave reason for some optimism and offered paths to help. He noted, for example, that the Federal Reserve had reported wages had started to decelerate and “the wage spiral is over.”

He also pressed the need for immigration reform saying it is the “real solution, we just need good immigration laws.” However, he called out “unserious politics,” as holding up a lot of progress, cautioning that immigration reform was among the hardest issues he had to work on as a legislator.

The former speaker called for a strategic blend of technology and immigration reform saying “You have guest worker programs. You have visas that are offered to fill big gaps in labor supply, which in the 21st century, you can do this in a technologically savvy way so that you’re not taking jobs away from a person who’s here. You’re not depressing a person’s wage.”

“In this day and age, we know how to do healthcare worker visas and agricultural worker visas and H1-B visas for software engineers and doctors and nurses,” he continued. “And we have people who want to come. From a pure economics point of view, that’s the only way … we can get our economy going back to a 3% trend of growth.

“It’s not an unsolvable problem. Immigration reform, which this industry desperately needs, will get done. [Democracy] is sloppy. It is slow. But it does get done, and I have every ounce of confidence that that’s going to happen here.”