When the 119th Congress is sworn in tomorrow, Friday, political observers predict House Speaker Mike Johnson will maintain his powerful role despite several GOP lawmakers publicly criticizing him and threatening to withhold their vote.
Republicans will hold a narrow 220-215 majority in the House leaving very little room for Johnson to lose votes among his own political party.
In an interview with Fox News, Indiana Republican Victoria Spartz (pictured at left) said the next Speaker needs to have “courage, vision, and a plan” to carry our President Elect-Trump’s agenda for his new term.
“And if Speaker Johnson wants to be Speaker,” she continued, “then he needs to lay out the plan and commit to that plan, not like what he did last year.”
Another prominent critic of Johnson is Thomas Massie, the libertarian-leaning Kentucky Republican famous for bucking his party.
Johnson, a congressman from Louisiana, stumbled into the Speaker’s chair in the fall of 2023, when Kevin McCarthy was rejected by vocal and determined members of the Freedom Caucus.
Johnson survived a floor motion in May, now eight months ago, to remove him as Speaker. That motion came from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene but her motion was defeated by a counter-vote to table it.
Johnson most recently angered that same conservative caucus over a bloated spending bill, known as a continuing resolution. Thanks to months of negotiations, the bill was filled with billions of dollars in questionable spending – pork barrel projects – that GOP lawmakers said they opposed and refused to support. A new version of the bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support days before Christmas.
Many of the complaining Republicans also blamed Johnson for allowing the terrible bill, including Rep. Chip Roy. He predicted days ago, on New Year’s Eve, that Johnson does not have the votes among GOP lawmakers to continue as House Speaker.
“Right now I don’t believe that he has the votes on Friday, and I think we need to have the conference get together so that we can get united,” Roy told Fox.
Micah Clark, executive director of the American Family Association of Indiana, tells AFN there might be good reasons for GOP lawmakers to complain about Johnson, but he says they have a problem over who would replace him.
“Show me a better alternative and I will understand what Sparks and Massey want, but I don't know what their alternative is,” Clark says.
