Tag: Mike Johnson
New Speaker Mike Johnson’s First Good Idea: A Debt Commission
“What can a bipartisan commission on the debt accomplish? The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), which has been advocating for such a commission, argues that special congressional task forces can focus discussions, generate greater public awareness of major issues, and create the opportunity for lawmakers to put all ideas on the table.
In 1983, for example, Social Security was approaching insolvency—a problem that sounds pretty familiar today—when a commission of congressional leaders and presidential appointees worked out a series of potential fixes. Afterward, Congress enacted many of those reforms, making Social Security solvent for another five decades.
More recently there was the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, formed by President Barack Obama in the aftermath of the 2008 recession. It produced a plan that could have reduced the debt by $4 trillion over 10 years by raising taxes, cutting spending, and selling off federal property. Even though most of those proposals were never enacted, the CRFB points hopefully to the fact that 11 of the 18 commission members supported the final recommendations, including five Republicans and five Democrats.”
https://reason.com/2023/10/27/new-speaker-mike-johnsons-first-good-idea-a-debt-commission/
‘I’ve prayed for each of you’: How Mike Johnson led a campaign of election denial
““This is a very weighty decision. All of us have prayed for God’s discernment. I know I’ve prayed for each of you individually,” Johnson said at the meeting, according to a record of his comments obtained by POLITICO, before urging his fellow Republicans to join him in opposing the results.
A review of the chaotic weeks between Trump’s defeat at the polls on Nov. 3, 2020, and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack shows that Johnson led the way in shaping legal arguments that became gospel among GOP lawmakers who sought to derail Biden’s path to the White House — even after all but the most extreme options had elapsed.
As Trump’s legal challenges faltered, Johnson consistently spread a singular message: It’s not over yet. And when Texas filed a last-ditch lawsuit against four states on Dec. 8, 2020, seeking to invalidate their presidential election results and throw out millions of ballots, Johnson quickly revealed he would be helming an effort to support it with a brief signed by members of Congress.
Throughout that period, Johnson was routinely in touch with Trump, even more so than many of his more recognizable colleagues.
Some of Johnson’s vocal opponents at the Jan. 5, 2021, closed-door meeting were Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who warned Johnson’s plan would lead to a constitutional and political catastrophe.
“Let us not turn the last firewall for liberty we have remaining on its head in a bit of populist rage for political expediency,” Roy said at the time, according to the record.
Nearly three years later, on Wednesday afternoon, Roy and Bacon cast two of the unanimous House GOP votes to make Johnson the next speaker.”
…
“Johnson then ran through a litany of allegations of election law changes in key states that he said were unconstitutional — and then he lent credence to a discredited claim of election fraud: “The allegation about these voting machines, some of them being rigged with the software by Dominion — look, there’s a lot of merit to that.”
In the same interview, Johnson — who as speaker will be privy to the nation’s most sensitive intelligence secrets — returned to the Dominion matter. He embraced the false description of Dominion machines as “a software system that is used all around the country that is suspect because it came from Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.”
When the hosts pressed Johnson on Trump’s losses in court, the Louisianan noted that there were still a dozen suits pending but it was an “uphill climb.” Later that day, House Republicans elected Johnson as the vice chair of the GOP conference.
When Johnson joined the effort to support Texas’ fight at the Supreme Court, he said Trump had been in touch with him yet again.
“President Trump called me this morning to let me know how much he appreciates the amicus brief we are filing on behalf of Members of Congress,” Johnson tweeted the next day.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/25/mike-johnson-trump-election-gambit-00123611
‘He Seems to Be Saying His Commitment Is to Minority Rule’
“As he understands it, this country was founded as a Christian nation. And he stands in a long tradition of conservative white evangelicals, particularly inside the Southern Baptist Convention, who have a distinct understanding of what that means. And this is where evangelical author and activist David Barton comes in.
Johnson has said that Barton’s ideas and teachings have been extremely influential on him, and that is essentially rooting him in this longer tradition of Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism essentially posits the idea that America is founded on God’s laws, and that the Constitution is a reflection of God’s laws. Therefore, any interpretation of the Constitution must align with Christian nationalists’ understanding of God’s laws. Freedom for them means freedom to obey God’s law, not freedom to do what you want. So really, Christian supremacy and a particular type of conservative Christianity is at the heart of Johnson’s understanding of the Constitution and an understanding of our government.”
…
“The core principles of our nation reflect these biblical truths and biblical principles. He has gone on record saying things like, for him, this biblical worldview means that all authority comes from God and that there are distinct realms of God-ordained authority, and that is the family, the church and the government.
Now, all this authority, of course, is under this broader understanding of God-given authority. So it’s not the right of any parents to decide what’s best for their kids; it’s the right of parents to decide what’s best for their kids in alignment with his understanding of biblical law. Same thing with the church’s role: It is to spread Christianity but also to care for the poor. That’s not the government’s job.
And then the government’s job is to support this understanding of authority and to align the country with God’s laws.”
…
“one of Johnson’s core principles of American conservatism — as he reiterated them in his speech on Wednesday — is free enterprise. For conservative evangelicals, they don’t really see much of a tension between these”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/27/mike-johnson-christian-nationalist-ideas-qa-00123882