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Johnson on Juggling His Party’s Personalities: ‘There’s No Room for Nonsense’

February 3, 2025

While Donald Trump is doing an impressive job getting his agenda off the ground by himself, at some point, he’s going to need Congress to stop huddling and get in the game. Apart from some easier legislative lifts — like the Laken Riley Act — there’s a lot of pressure on the House and Senate to start delivering some concrete wins on the president’s agenda. That’s a complicated prospect when Republicans can’t decide how to get the legislation moving — let alone what should go in it.

Most of the House’s GOP caucus was holed up in Miami last week trying to hash out their differences, but so far, reviews of that progress have been mixed. Some conservatives boycotted the event entirely — leaving plenty of question marks about how well the teambuilding plan is working out. “Their margins are so slim, everyone’s a king or a queen over there. There’s a lot of competing self-interest,” Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said in an interview. Of course, the Democrats have their own issues, but as National Review’s Audrey Fahlberg points out, they’re “already getting the popcorn ready.”

If there is a truce on the Republican side after Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) reelection, it’s a fragile one. The Louisianan, who’s had to try to govern in this intra-party powder keg, brushed off concerns from some of his more disagreeable members that the GOP still doesn’t have a plan.

“We’re right on schedule,” the speaker insisted to Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill.” “We’ve been plotting this out … for more than a year. We planned for this moment of having unified government [and] unified control of Washington with the White House, the Senate, and the House. And as we’ve discussed so many times, we have to fix everything.” And to “fix everything,” Johnson explained, we need the budget reconciliation process “to check most of those boxes.”

But it’s not easy, he cautions. “[B]ecause there [are] so many components to that legislation [and we’re trying to get] its ingredients right, reaching the right consensus level amongst 217 or 18 Republicans in the House takes a lot of work. And the retreat earlier in the week was a big part of that. … It was a great kind of reset for everyone to be in that room and work it out inside the tent, so to speak, as our big family. And we’re moving along, progressing very well. I think we’re going to get everyone to that equilibrium point so we can move this agenda forward.”

Asked whether there’s a spirit of unity in the caucus, Johnson nodded. “Everyone recognizes the stakes are so high, and we have the smallest margin in U.S. history with the most aggressive and ambitious legislative agenda in memory. So, you put all those things together. There’s no room for nonsense. And I think that has a way of clarifying things for people. … [T]he last time [we had] unified government in 2017, I was here as a freshman in Congress, [and] we had a couple of dozen seats that we could spare — votes that we could spare on anything. We don’t have that any longer. And so that requires everyone to roll up their sleeves, stay in that room, and work out their differences amongst their preferences with their colleagues. So that’s moving along steadily. We’ll get it done,” he tried to reassure people.

True, Perkins said, but we’re talking about “a group of leaders with some very strong personalities.” “I’ve been in those closed rooms,” he continued. “I’ve served with elected officials. They all have great ideas. They were [all] elected to represent their people. And it’s not just something [where] you can say [to them], ‘Do this.’ You’ve got to work toward consensus.”

Absolutely, Johnson conceded, but even so, “There’s a real method to what may seem like madness. You have to trust the process.” That said, he admitted, “It’s going to be a dizzying pace for that first 100 days. There’s a lot of moving parts, as you know, with the smallest margin in history. … We’re going to have 217 Republicans in the House and 215 Democrats for the big chunk of that first 100 days. Meaning: do the math. I can only lose one vote. So because of that dynamic and because of the complexity of the legislation that we’re working on and all the problems that we have to fix — because [of] the nightmare of the Biden-Harris administration — this process has to be a bottom-up, member-driven process.”

There was a time, the speaker recalled, “in the old days,” when Congress had big margins, and there were only a couple of top leaders in the back room making all of the decisions. “And they would go out and dictate to the members that they [needed to] get in line and all do whatever the leadership said, knowing that they could spare a couple dozen or maybe three or four dozen votes at a time. We don’t have that anymore,” Johnson reiterated. “So when I get a piece of legislation to the floor, I have to know well in advance that every single person in my caucus is okay with every one of its provisions. They may not be delighted with all of it,” he acknowledged, “but they’ve got to be prepared and ready to pursue it and advance that legislation. So to do that, to get to that point requires a laborious process leading up to it. So our sleeves are rolled up. We’re in the basements. We’re on the whiteboard sessions with the members. … And it just takes a lot of time on things that are this complicated.”

At the end of the day, FRC’s president pointed out, “This is what people wanted,” adding that one of the main reasons the House Freedom Caucus even exists is because members weren’t allowed to be part of the process. This is representative government, the speaker responded. “And it’s exactly what the framers of the Constitution envisioned — that every constituent, by way of their duly elected representative, would actually have a voice at the table. And that’s what we’re delivering.”

And in case Americans are wondering, Johnson explained, “94% of the House Republicans so far have participated in the process. They’ve been to these lengthy discussion sessions and strategy sessions. They’ve let their voices be heard. They’re part of the process. Only 14 Republicans haven’t yet participated in one of these hours-long discussions [and] debates, and a handful of them are for reasons for logistics and otherwise, and they’ll all be involved by the end of this. And that’s really, really important for us to achieve.”

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.



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