House Speaker Mike Johnson retained the gavel Friday. His backing by House Republicans wasn’t the cleanest Speaker vote and required some convincing after three party members initially voted against him. Two later switched to Johnson, and he was reelected with 218 votes.
The dissent highlights the power of Donald Trump’s endorsement, Washington Times reporter Alex Miller said on Washington Watch Friday. It was a victory of the day with a “we’ll see” on Johnson’s future in the job. Those who opposed Johnson likely did so with fiscal concerns. He remains under a hot light.
“Today was ‘team player day,’ Tomorrow is secure the frigging border and cut frigging spending day,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) wrote on X after Friday’s vote.
Miller told show host Tony Perkins that though Johnson’s vote wasn’t seamless, it was much better than the fight faced by his predecessor Kevin McCarthy.
It took the California Republican 15 ballots to get the votes in January 2023, and in doing so McCarthy made concessions to opponents that included the ability for any House member to call for a motion to vacate the chair. That ultimately cost him his job in October of the same year.
“It could have been a lot rougher. A couple of hours in the chamber is a lot better than a multi-day affair,” Miller said, referring to the process that convinced two GOP lawmakers to switch their votes.
Avoiding a McCarthy-like fiasco
House members, many keen to avoid another multi-day affair to fill the Speaker’s chair, approved a new rules package Friday where they made it tougher to call for a motion to vacate. Now that call requires nine members from the majority party to call for a vote.
The move sparked backlash from Democrats who accused Republicans of eroding the significance of the minority party, Fox News reported.
“Their proposed changes, for the first time in American history, shield the Speaker from accountability to the entire chamber by making it so that only Republicans can move to oust the Speaker,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts), the top Democrat on the Rules Committee.
House members were feeling pressured to get this done. Republicans hold a slim majority and needed to settle the Speaker issue before Monday when they were to certify the votes that elected Trump for the White House. A terror attack in New Orleans and a truck explosion in Las Vegas, both carried out by U.S. military members, highlighted a need for stability within the country.
Ahead of the vote, the feeling was that as many as 12 Republicans opposed Johnson, Miller said.
“A lot of us believed this could go beyond one round. There were plenty of holdouts making a series of demands, whether it was getting confirmation or some kind of deal set in place to have spending cuts, to have bigger changes in the upcoming reconciliation packages. There was a feeling these guys would stay entrenched in that,” he explained.
Johnson was telling people the House would remain in session Friday until the Speakership was decided, Rep. Mark Alford (R-Missouri) told Perkins. “Some of us were thinking this may go to two or three votes,” Alford shared.
Republicans will also hold a majority when the new Senate is seated.
“I don’t think Johnson’s completely out of the woods yet," Miller added, "but it does get things rolling for the Republicans and their fresh start on the trifecta.”
Getting behind Johnson
Trump originally endorsed Johnson on Dec. 30. Miller called the vote a “true test" of the power of the president-elect's endorsement.
"As we saw with some of the holdouts, they decided eventually to agree with the [incoming] president. How long that agreement will last is questionable,” Miller acknowledged.
He noted that House members haven’t given Trump everything he’s asked for in these early days. He wanted to lift the debt ceiling in the December spending talks, but the House said, “no.”
“A lot of fiscal conservatives and debt hawks didn’t like that idea. They gave him a victory today. As long as Trump likes Johnson, Johnson’s probably going to stick around,” Miller predicted.
Part of Trump’s persuasion in a phone-call discussion Friday with Reps. Ralph Norman, Keith Self, Thomas Massie (the three initial dissenters) and others included assurances that more voices would be heard in the decision-making process, Miller said. That approach would allow the staunchly fiscal conservatives more influence.
“Part of that is including them in more negotiations, particularly when it comes to spending. That is their main thing. Let’s cut the deficit, let’s cut spending,” Miller said.
But before they can make meaningful cuts, Republicans are going to have to learn to work together.
“Here’s the chatter that I hear. There are people who are frustrated with the process, people who are frustrated with the individuals, and there’s a third part that’s frustrated with both of them. I fit that mold being in the third part. I know this is not a perfect process, and we have work to do,” Alford said.
The give-and-take of deficit reduction
Alford, a member of the Appropriations Committee, said, “We’re going to be voting on some very tough things to move the ball forward and make sure that all 12 appropriations bills get out of committee, but even more so to make sure we get those on the House floor and that they are passed and sent over to the Senate.”
Alford challenged fiscal conservatives to focus on passing spending bills to avoid the 11th-hour omnibus packages that, in order to keep government operating, force their hands and include so many provisions they oppose.
“If you’re going to stand for little things in a bill that hold you up for voting on that, maybe it’s time to start looking at the bigger picture that we can be more effective for President Trump and the 'America First' agenda by getting our funding done,” he said.
