‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’: Speaker Johnson Draws Out Budget Reconciliation Plan For Trump 2.0
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said on Sunday that he wants the House to pass one hefty budget reconciliation bill to realize President-elect Donald Trump‘s policy agenda during the early months of his second term, dealing with a broad range of issues such as border security, tax cut extensions, the U.S. economy, and energy.
In an interview on “Sunday Morning Futures,” Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo noted that new Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has been pushing for splitting the legislation into two reconciliation bills and asked Johnson what Trump prefers.
“Yes, he and I have talked about this quite a bit, as you might imagine, over the last few months, determining the pros and cons of the two different strategies,” Johnson said. “I respect Lindsey Graham and all my friends who kind of preferred a two-step strategy. The idea would be: get something done on the border and maybe defense spending right out of the blocks very quickly in what we would call a skinny reconciliation bill, and then do the rest of it in a larger chunk later.”
Johnson, who huddled with colleagues over the weekend at Fort McNair to discuss the plan, said he thought “at the end of the day, President Trump is going to prefer, as he likes to say, ‘one big, beautiful bill.’ And there’s a lot of merit to that, because we can put it all together, one big up-or-down vote, which can save the country, quite literally, because there are so many elements to it. And it’ll give us a little bit more time to negotiate that and get it right.”
The speaker insisted the plan for reconciliation does not mean “we won’t come right out of the gates full-fledged right out of the beginning of the Congress.” The House will be “addressing the border” over the next couple weeks with fixes that are “so commonsense” that some Democrats may support them, Johnsons noted, adding that those bills could be ready for Trump to sign when he takes office on January 20.
As for the reconciliation bill itself, the legislation will “have a lot of pieces,” Johnson said. “We made a lot of campaign promises. President Trump did as well, and reconciliation is the way to get it done. Why? Because you avoid a 60-vote threshold in the Senate.”
Johnson then alluded to a two-step process in which putting together a budget resolution would precede the House and Senate actually considering the reconciliation legislation.
“Reconciling the budget, which we will pass in early February, is how we will get all of our committees involved, committees of jurisdiction all these big issues. What are they? Well, obviously, we have to secure the border. We have got to make sure that our Border Patrol agents and our immigration enforcement agencies have the right directives from the White House, but also the right resources to do their job and secure that border once and for all,” he said.
“We have got to take care of the dangerous illegal criminals who have come over, and all that’s part of it as well. And we have got to shift immediately to the economy. Maria, you know, you talk about every day, we have got to revive the U.S. economy, and we can. We know how to do it,” Johnson continued. “Part of that is preventing the largest tax increase in U.S. history, which would happen automatically at the end of next year if we don’t get our ducks in a row. So we’re going to make sure that happens. We’re going to incentivize American companies to manufacture in the U.S. again. And we’re going to make sure that the regulatory burden and the red tape that has smothered our free market is reduced and eliminated.”
Johnson said “we’re going to be dismantling the deep state all along the way. We’re going to restore American energy dominance, so many different pieces to this, Maria. They all have to work together. And, of course, the president has asked us and really needs us to address the debt limit crisis before that hits in June. So, a lot of moving pieces, a lot of things to negotiate, a lot of opinions on all that, so we will be working long, long hours with whiteboards, making sure every Republican is on board, because, remember, I will be dealing with the smallest margin in U.S. history for much of the first 100 days. But we’re going to get it done.”
Bartiromo asked Johnson if he is expecting to raise or eliminate the debt ceiling as part of the reconciliation legislation.
“I think we’re going to have to do it in that bill. And the reason for that, Maria, is that we won’t have to negotiate with [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer and the Democrats on that,” the speaker replied. “If you do it in reconciliation, you can do it just with the Republican Party. So we will have very thoughtful discussion and debate about where that limit should go. But here’s the important thing everybody needs to remember. We’re the team that wants to cut spending, and we will. And we will do it dramatically, all the wasteful spending in government. DOGE will be doing its effort in coordination with all this. But you have to raise the debt limit on paper, so that we don’t frighten the bond markets and the world’s economy. You know how that works. It’s about the stability of our economy. But we don’t intend to spend to that limit, as President Trump will clarify all the time. We’re going to raise the ceiling, but we are going to be cutting all along the way, so we can do both of those things simultaneously.”
Bartiromo also pressed Johnson on “what’s a realistic timeline” for getting the legislative package advanced through Congress and on Trump’s desk. “Would you have that on the president’s desk by May?” she asked.
“Certainly by May, yes,” Johnson said. “In fact, we’re targeting a vote in the House maybe in the first week of April. Now, everything’s got to move in the right sequence. And along the way, I think we’re going to keep those trains moving in the right direction and on time. And if that happens, we will get it out of the House in early April, maybe as soon as April 3, and then move it over to the Senate. That would put that bill on the president’s desk for signature by the end of April. That would be fantastic. And, in a worst-case scenario: Memorial Day.”