Johnson Races to Ready for Trump: ‘This Is an Around-the-Clock Operation Right Now’
By Family Research Council
While miles of fences and concrete barriers line the most iconic spots of the National Mall, there are other preparations underway for Donald Trump’s inauguration – well out of the public eye. As the city transforms into the best and most patriotic version of itself, Republicans are working well into the night on the most significant plans: what the first few days of the new administration will look like.
Under the Capitol dome, which is already draped in red-white-and-blue bunting, members are hurrying from meeting to meeting to cement their plans for the flurry of business that starts after Trump’s oath of office. For House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), it’s the culmination of months of work that started as early as last summer on the campaign trail, when it became obvious that the 45th president had the momentum he needed to win. The 100-days agenda is “very aggressive,” the Louisianan explained as far back as June. “Those days cannot get here soon enough,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.
Now that the time has come, the speaker is focused on one thing: undoing the damage Joe Biden did to this country’s security, economy, families, and sovereignty. “We’re going to reverse some of the crazy things that this administration did in the areas of public policy,” he previewed to Perkins on Saturday. “All of that begins this month, so we’re excited and working steadily,” Johnson explained. “This is an around-the-clock operation right now, because we have to fix everything.”
Of course, as the speaker understands better than anyone, he’ll need every Republican on the same page to get a single piece of Trump’s agenda off the ground — something that’s proven, as recently as this month, to be a monumental task. The president-elect has tried to minimize some of that tension, bringing members of the House Freedom Caucus to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend to hash out some of the differences that threatened to torpedo Johnson’s reelection as speaker.
“Unity was a huge part of the meeting,” one of the Republicans confirmed. “I think that kind of team-building [and] camaraderie is really important,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) explained to Politico, “because we have a heavy lift in front of us.” Despite the bitter debates the fiscal hawks have had with leadership of late, Donalds reiterated, “It was really much more a fun, enjoyable dinner than a deep policy session.”
Congressman Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) explained to Perkins on Tuesday’s show, “We talked for several hours, as a matter of fact, late into the evening. But it was on border security. It was on crime. It’s how, quite frankly, the Biden administration has used the weapon of the pen [with] executive orders to attack and invade our country and undermine every working American day in and day out.”
One of the recurring themes has also been reconciliation — the process that allows Republicans to move two budget-related bills through the Senate with a simple majority instead of the usual 60 votes it takes to end debate on a proposal. Part of it, Ogles admitted, “is nerdy procedural stuff.” But to make the drastic changes Trump and the American people demand, it’s a crucial piece of the puzzle moving into next week. Right now, there’s disagreement among the GOP over whether the party should bundle all of their major policy goals like tax cuts and border security into one “big, beautiful bill,” as Trump is urging, or two. But there’s also legitimate concern that the president-elect’s strategy might open the door to more spending waste.
Several GOP members of the Senate and House Freedom Caucus are urging the White House to split the priorities into two reconciliation bills (which is the maximum number a majority can advance each fiscal year) so that nothing sneaks into the legislation that derails them.
“You know, Donald Trump is strategic,” Ogles pointed out. “I think he wants to deliver some quick wins for the American people. The election was a mandate to secure the border, to, again, attack crime, to get these folks [who] are illegally. We know we have murderers here. We know we have terrorists here. We need to go find them. We need to deport them. We need to get them out of our country. And so with that, I think organically there’s the opportunity or perhaps even the likelihood that this could end up being two separate bills, because the larger [it is] … the more complicated it becomes, and the more difficult it will be to pass and the longer it will take to pass.” He suggested that if Trump delivers “a smaller bill, then follow[s] up with tax policy,” it will be easier to get done. “We can make sure Donald Trump has a successful 100 days and delivers a secure border for the American people.”
The speaker, who’s been careful to follow Trump’s lead, emphasized that Republicans might disagree on the process, but they do agree on the “overall objectives.” “The debate has been about the sequencing,” he explained to Perkins. “And when we say one large reconciliation bill, that is the best chance that we have to get all of these initiatives done.” As he explained, the House has less room for error than the Senate. “We have a smaller margin. For the first time in U.S. history, there are more Republicans by way of margin in the Senate than there [are] in the House. So they can lose three votes on any given measure, and I can only lose one or two.” In other words, he said, “I have 150 more personalities to deal with and get on the same page.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has a similar problem — but fewer cats to herd. What matters, the speaker insisted, is that he and Thune have a great relationship. “We’ve been talking about this very thoughtfully and deliberately. There’s a handful of [Republican] senators — I wouldn’t say all of them — [who] are very adamant that we ought to do two bills in the House. We believe one bill is the best way.”
The reason, he went on, is simple. “[W]hat they want to do is take some of the border measures and maybe defense spending and do that right out of the blocks very early in January and then leave the larger piece, which is the tax extension of the tax cuts and some of the other very complicated things that we’ve got to do, on a larger package. The problem is, if you take the border and defense spending off of the larger package, those things are very popular among Republicans. And that’s kind of the anchor to get the harder things done. So there’s a risk in splitting them up. I’ve explained that to President Trump in detail. And as of today, now, I think he very much agrees with what I’m saying. And I think he told that to the senators when he met with them this week.”
Ogles and his colleagues do understand the need to get something substantial done in the first 100 days. “And so, understanding how the sausage gets made up here by putting border security with some strategic cuts together in a package, again addressing the debt ceiling, we can move quickly — much more quickly than we can if everything is in there,” he countered. “And then, quite frankly, once you have one ‘big, beautiful bill,’ it ends up typically getting filled up with a bunch of nonsense and pork,” which the hardline conservatives won’t tolerate. But again, the Tennessee congressman underscored, “I think we’ve got to cut where we can cut. Look, we can’t cut our way out of this mess. We’re going to have to grow our way out of this mess. But every cut, every penny, every dollar matters.”
One thing that both sides can agree on is that “we’ve got to change the way this town operates,” Ogles insisted. “[O]ne of the successes we had with this when Mike Johnson was elected — and I was one of the individuals that helped whip those final votes and get him across the finish line — is that you can’t do suspension bills the last day right before you fly out. Because what ends up happening is they put some junk bill together. They sweeten it for the Democrats, and they pass it with a majority of Democrat votes. You can’t do that anymore,” he argued. “You can only do a suspension bill on a Monday or Tuesday.”
Again, he acknowledged, “It’s nerdy. Most people don’t understand why that’s important. But what it does is it stops this town from running over the American people. And so, day in and day out, what we’re trying to do is fix how this place operates.” And yes, “One big, beautiful bill might seem great, but when you understand everything that gets thrown in there, it’s really counterintuitive to the mandate that the American people delivered to Donald Trump and to Congress to fix this country.”
Whatever form the reconciliation strategy takes, Johnson reminded viewers, “We work in the greatest deliberative body in, really, the history of the world. And we get the opportunity [in] the extraordinary moment in history that we’re in, to hold that thing together. … And I can tell you, the Republicans in the House and the Senate are very excited right now.”
At the end of the day, the speaker underscored, “God is the one that raises up those in authority. Scripture is very clear about that. And so with that great responsibility, there are a lot of things that come along with that. And so, I’m encouraging my colleagues to remember that, to keep our perspective. We don’t grasp these gavels or hold on to these titles with any sense of pride or anything else. This is a this is a moment of service. And it is a sacrifice,” and no matter what happens, “we ought to regard it that way.”
AUTHOR
Suzanne Bowdey
Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.
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