New Speaker Paul Ryan sleeping in his Longworth House office

This doesn't say as much about Paul Ryan (who is just a Republican being a Republican) as it does about the uselessness of the Sunday shows, the crown jewels of establishment political journalism.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, as you will learn in nearly any article about him, is a wonk's wonk, so full of wonky wonkiness that never before has Congress seen a leader who cares so deeply about the substance of governing.

The bill authored by Transportation Chairman Bill Shuster, Pennsylvania Republican, authorizes roads projects for six years but only pays for the first three years, relying on revenue from the federal gas tax and a mix of offsets the Senate cobbled together when it passed its own highway bill in the summer.

Republican lawmakers leaving a closed-door policy meeting said that among those amendments was a provision to renew the charter of the U.S. Export-Import Bank.

"We've been bold on tactics, but we have been timid on ideas, on policies".

As Terri Boyer, executive director and assistant research professor at Rutgers University's Center for Women and Work, recently told me when I asked about market solutions to the problem of access to paid leave: "We've already let the market have its say".

Ryan made his unprompted assertion during an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd that aired Sunday on "Meet the Press". That's about as far as Mr. Ryan is likely to go in criticizing Mr. Boehner, however, because the departing speaker really has done the presumptive incoming speaker a huge favor. No. 3, we have to be a more effective opposition party.

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. Paul Ryan said it would hurt the trust that Republicans have in the president, and hurt the inability of Republicans to come to a few kind of consensus if that's to be found.

The new speaker has put into place at least one significant change. "We need to go a different direction and we owe it to the country to show that different direction, so that's what we're going to focus on".

Former Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, negotiated a two-year budget blueprint with congressional Democrats and the White House that established overall spending levels and raised the debt ceiling before handing the gavel over to Ryan.

But, one issue he won't allow to go forward is comprehensive immigration legislation, so long as Obama is in office because, Ryan said, the president has proven to be untrustworthy on the issue.

"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.

Ryan pledged to fix the broken House after winning the election, promising to work with committee chairs and rank-and-file members to legislate in the lower chamber and begin solving the nation's problems instead of adding to them.

A minute earlier, the hawkish senator had said that Obama's Syrian policy was the "worst possible outcome" and warned of another major terror attack on USA soil because of Obama's lack of commitment to the region.

The specter of poison-pill amendments has once again raised fears that the House would insist on legislation that would fail in the Senate or earn the veto of the president, continuing gridlock Ryan has promised to loosen.

Part of Ryan's promise: To allow a more bottom-up approach and decentralize power from the speaker's office.