There are a lot of folks on the Right who so far seem underwhelmed by Mike Johnson’s performance as House Speaker. That could change starting in January – or if it doesn’t, a major opportunity could be missed.

Johnson was, in a real sense, an interim replacement after Kevin McCarthy went down for the count in a vote of no confidence. That change came for a number of reasons, but the most important one was that McCarthy promised to return the House of Representatives to regular order and produce a budget rather than subjecting House members to endless gun-to-your-head votes on continuing resolutions, and he failed to fulfill that pledge.

Johnson has made the same promise that McCarthy did. He hasn’t been able to make it good. And there will be yet another continuing resolution to kick the can down the road, at least for a couple more months.

It isn’t for a lack of trying to restore the budget process, though. And Johnson has been blocked by a Democrat majority in the Senate, not to mention a hostile Biden administration.

But in January, those obstacles are gone.

So are the excuses.

This both puts Johnson on a hot seat, but it also means he has an opportunity to make good on goals he’s pursued for his whole congressional career.

It’s a heady time, and to discuss it he sat down with Fox News’ Bret Baier yesterday to talk about it. Some highlights, from a press release Johnson’s office put out last night…

On the budget reconciliation process:

Look, everyone is absolutely determined to get the budget done very quickly right out of the gates. We’re going to do that early January and that will set the table for the reconciliation process. And the reason that’s so important, of course, for folks back home, remember the only way around the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, to go with the bare majority, is the reconciliation process. You are reconciling the budget. So, 51 votes in the Senate is the magic to do the real policy change that we want.

We think we can squeeze a lot into that limited process. There probably will be at least two reconciliation packages. So, the determination right now is where does the tax piece fit in? Do we do that first out of the gates, or do you wait a couple months to get all that done? Because it can be very complicated.

It’s no surprise that border is the top of everyone’s priority list because it’s the top of the list for the American people. We do that, we do energy policy, we ensure that we don’t have the largest tax increase in US history, which is what would happen at the end of next year if we don’t extend those tax cuts. And a lot of other things that we want to do. In the meantime, we’ll be dismantling the deep state. And that’s what the DOGE effort is all about.

 

On the Department of Government Efficiency:

I think it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to do really big, transformational things. I brought them to the Hill last week and met with a small group of chairs of the committees of jurisdiction, people who are actually kind of the engineers of the budget and kind of the infrastructure of government and how it works. Great productive discussion and interaction.

But Congress certainly has a role to play in all of that and how it interacts with the budget and all that together. There’s a lot of meticulous planning that goes into executing on this, and I’m very confident we’ll be able to do that. Elon and Vivek are pretty smart guys. And they know a lot about running efficient and productive companies. And this is a large one, the federal government.

 

On government funding:

In principle, we don’t like continuing resolutions, but in this case, as a Republican, as a conservative, it does make the most sense, and that’s why all the conservative groups are in favor of that idea. Because it allows us to make more of these key decisions in the new year, when we have the new Congress, new President, new Senate and House.

 

On the Speakership election:

Look, we have a unified conference. I’ve talked with every single individual at great length and all of us collectively are ready to take – using our football metaphor – to take this proverbial football and run it right back up the field. And to do that, you’ve got to have cohesion on your team and you’ve got to have all that predetermined, and it is. So I think we’ll have a smooth transition and a smooth election as speaker. Because we don’t have any time to waste.