With Reconciliation Vote, a Humble Mike Johnson Keeps on Winning
If there were Vegas odds on Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) speakership a year and a half ago, you could forgive people for betting against him. The relative unknown from Louisiana may have been a quiet, well-liked congressman, but no one could have possibly foreseen the young attorney’s meteoric rise to the top of the Republican leadership — or his shocking prowess in the role. Thursday, in the face of his most monumental accomplishment yet, whatever skeptics remained (and there weren’t many) have almost certainly become reluctant admirers as this thoughtful, spectacle-wearing dad of four carves out a space as one of the most impactful, underestimated gavel-holders of the modern age.
While the job isn’t done, Johnson has already accomplished more than people thought possible. Hauling the “one, big, beautiful bill” — often by sheer will — across the House’s first finish line early Thursday morning was the capstone to months of work, deliberation, and open and transparent debate. With a single vote to spare, the speaker’s trademark ability to find consensus in the heat of the fiercest intra-party battles came through. Again.
Finding the sweet spot between the competing demands of his fractured caucus is no easy feat — certainly not on more than 1,100 pages of policy. And yet, Johnson has managed to assuage concerns, get people to the negotiating table, and cobble together the kind of unity that speakers with five times his vote margin could only dream of.
Family Research Council’s Senior Director for Government Affairs Quena González, who’s had a front row seat to Johnson’s leadership genius, continues to be amazed at the wins this speaker is piling up. But, he points out after the benefit of 18 months of watching him, “This is really Mike Johnson’s signature style. … If viewers have not gone back and listened to his first speech to the House of Representatives [in October 2023] when he became speaker, he [urged] members to call upon their better angels, warning [conservatives that they] needed to be on better behavior than we’ve seen in the past.”
That includes “this kind of transparency where these divisions are out in the open,” Quena continued on “Washington Watch.” “We’re used to having strong men in power, leading the House and the Senate and sort of forcing things in different ways and backroom deals. Mike Johnson is in many ways dealing out in the open. These warring factions within the party really do disagree. And Mike is bringing them together and putting them in the same room to talk things out,” he said, adding, “This is how Congress was supposed to function.”
The House debate, which taxed and stretched members into another long overnighter, had been raging around the clock since Wednesday’s 1 a.m. start time. In the meantime, Democrats tried their best to sabotage the progress, offering more than 500 amendments. At one point, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) stooped to claiming, somewhat pathetically, that “people will die” as a result of this legislation. “That’s not hype,” he claimed. “That’s not hypothetical.”
Meanwhile, President Trump sat with a rotating group of Republicans, prodding them to unite around common ground and warning them against committing “the ultimate betrayal” of voting against the bill. In the end, only two did — Reps. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) and routine defector Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.), who, the day before, had suggested the bill might take “weeks” to iron out, voted “present” in a squeaker 215-214 vote.
The final product seemed to live up to Johnson’s prediction, “not everyone is going to be delighted … but everyone can be satisfied.” In the end, the somewhat comically-named “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” Act (H.R. 1) had a little something for everyone, including:
- Removing taxpayer-funded gender transition procedures for minors and adults;
- The defunding of Big Abortion groups like Planned Parenthood to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars;
- A permanent extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts;
- Speeding up the work requirement for Medicaid’s able-bodied enrollees to start in 2026 instead of 2029 and forcing the states to take on more of a cost-sharing role to pay for the program’s Biden-era expansion;
- Rolling back Joe Biden’s wildly expensive “green energy” tax credits;
- A significant boost in military and border spending, including $25 billion to start the construction of a Golden Dome defense system;
- Spending cuts worth $1.5 trillion in waste, fraud, and abuse;
- Setting the child tax credit to $2,000, pegging it to inflation, and for the next four years, adding an additional $500 per child;
- Boosting the adoption tax credit to $16,800, pegs it to inflation, and makes it more accessible to low-income families;
- Introducing new child-friendly investment accounts, including a federal $1,000 “baby bonus,” along with other pro-family wins;
- Financial incentives for homeschooling and school choice;
- An overhaul of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that would shift more of the financial burden to the states and put more capable people to work as a condition of receiving food stamps;
- A $4 trillion increase to the debt ceiling, which Trump’s Treasury secretary warns the U.S. will hit as early as July;
- $12 billion in reimbursements for states like Texas that have footed the bill for outsized border-security costs under Biden;
- A four-fold jump in state and local tax (SALT) deductions for the swing-state moderates, raising the cap from $10,000 to $40,000.
Look, Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” Thursday evening. “It’s not perfect, but you have to take a step back. And I took a step back and said … ‘We banked a lot of wins in this bill. We were able to defund Planned Parenthood. That is massive. That’s huge. Something that I never thought this town would be able to accomplish. We were able to eliminate the funding through Medicaid for transgender surgeries.'” He continued, “We were able to reinvigorate our industry sector and our energy sector … extend the Trump tax cuts, which are huge to our economy.”
He was careful to say that all of this “doesn’t mean that we have solved the debt problem. It’s just something that we’ll just have to continue to fight for in the future.” But, Burlison added, “I think that the Freedom Caucus and myself were successful and able to — over the course of these last few months — get us in a position that was stronger and stronger and stronger at each step of the way.”
His colleague, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), echoed that sentiment. “We didn’t get here overnight on all these issues,” he told Perkins, referring to the ballooning deficit, “and it’s not going to be taken care of in one bill. But [we’ve] got to make sure that we have a course correction — a significant course correction — and we get a lot of wins for the president’s agenda that obviously the American people voted for.
As one of the most vocal conservatives summed it up, there’s “some good, some bad.” And yet, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) went on, their objections did push the House to slash more spending. It probably doesn’t go far enough, he acknowledged just after midnight Thursday, but “There are things in the executive space, executive actions that we think could take care of … some of our concerns on the Medicaid expansion.”
Speaking of executives, the president’s enthusiasm was palpable on Truth Social. “This is arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country! Great job by Speaker Mike Johnson, and the House Leadership, and thank you to every Republican who voted YES on this Historic Bill! Now, it’s time for our friends in the United States Senate to get to work, and send this Bill to my desk AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!”
While Johnson managed to “land this plane,” as he put it, there’s almost certainly turbulence ahead as the Senate takes it up. On the other side of the Capitol, Republicans have already hinted at several changes they want to make to spending levels, SALT and SNAP reforms, and other sticking points, which House members worry could derail the Fourth of July timetable. If the two chambers don’t pass identical bills, they’ll have to make another trip to the negotiating table. “The process is going to be messy,” Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) warned, predicting “twists and turns” ahead.
The speaker, for his part, cautioned against sweeping edits to the House version after his chamber put in “countless hours of work over the past year, a lot of prayer, and a lot of teamwork.” “To our friends in the Senate, I would just say, the president is waiting with his pen,” Johnson urged.
Meanwhile, there’s no shortage of praise for the incredible leadership of the young speaker. Perkins, who’s known Johnson since law school, applauded him and fellow Louisianan and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) for their “masterful job shepherding this historic legislation.”
González also praised the radical and intentional shift in process. Republicans celebrated “a new morning in America” Thursday, he pointed out, “but what we’re really witnessing on Capitol Hill is a new morning of transparency. This is the difference between legislating where deals are made and contending factions push and pull and see where they can reach an equilibrium and where they can move a common goal forward as they are here — versus political theater, which is what I think a lot of Americans are used to and, quite frankly, sick of. So, in some ways, even though the process is at times slower [and] more frustrating, this kind of transparency is really good for the American people to see.”
Of course, he warned, the debate is not over. This One Big Beautiful Bill Act has some hurdles to jump before conservatives can truly celebrate. “It’s got several more steps,” González explained. “So now is not the time to lay off. Now is not the time to take our foot off the gas.”
In the meantime, Mike Johnson doesn’t expect to get much downtime. “I’m very much like a wartime speaker,” he reflected with Pastor Greg Laurie. “I mean, it’s kind of a crazy time in American politics, and Capitol Hill tends to be very divided. We have a very aggressive agenda,” he said, “and it requires a lot. The modern speakership, the way this all developed over the last 250 years, is really an all-encompassing job. It’s a 24-hour operation, really, and we don’t get a lot of time for rest. But I’ve decided this is a season of just extreme sacrifice and service, and that one day we’ll rest sometime in the future.”
Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.