Below is the “maiden” speech of House Speaker Mike Johnson yesterday. Johnson has been on the job as Speaker for 100 days, but this was his first official speech to the country (he gave an acceptance speech last fall when he won his current job, but hasn’t given an official address since).
And it’s a five-alarm fire for the Biden administration.
In the speech, Johnson goes through the multiple executive orders and unilateral policy actions the administration has taken in order to facilitate the border invasion of as many as 10 million people into the country – with no vetting, no attempt at disincentivizing people to crash the border, and no cooperation with states attempting to handle this themselves.
You can’t watch this speech and believe the Biden administration is acting in good faith.
But most important, Johnson annihilates the narrative that House Republicans are stopping efforts to secure the border because they won’t do a deal with Chuck Schumer to fund more processing of illegals. That’s an absolute lie, and not a particularly plausible one.
Johnson notes that HR 2, the House Republicans’ bill that would direct the president to reverse policies like his abandonment of Remain in Mexico, his reinstitution of catch-and-release and other things President Trump did which had all but stopped the flow of illegals over the southern border, is just sitting in the Senate and won’t be brought forward for a vote.
He doesn’t come right out and say that until the Senate takes up that legislation the House isn’t obligated to do a damn thing, but that’s the gist of it.
And he addressed this provision which supposedly exists in the so-far-not-for-public-view bill that Mitch McConnell, Biden and Schumer have been cooking up that authorizes the president to shut down the border after 5,000 illegals a day are coming in. Which Johnson describes as “madness,” and appropriately so.
It’s a 30-minute speech, it’s Johnson at his best, and the hope is that it changes the game on the border.
Our congressional elections this fall ought to turn on this speech and what Johnson says in it. That will only happen if the spines of GOP senators are stiffened and the public understands what they’ll get from Republican majorities in both bodies.
Maybe this speech will do that. It should.
What say you, Mitch McConnell?