House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News on Sunday he hopes to have what Presdient-elect Donald Trump might describe as one “big, beautiful bill” to sign by May as the GOP attempts to enact much of Trump’s agenda with a single piece of legislation.
That could be a hard sell with a slim House majority and the fact the bill would have to make its way through the Senate before it could ultimately find its way to Trump’s desk early in his coming term.
On Sunday Morning Futures, anchor Maria Bartiromo welcomed the speaker for a lengthy interview in which she touched on reporting from Saturday that Trump wanted to cover border security, tax reform, and energy with one mammoth piece of legislation.
Johnson indicated the legislation would be more audacious than what was initially reported.
“Have you spoken with President Trump about what he prefers?” Bartiromo asked Johnson. “Does he want one large reconciliation package to include border security, deportations as well as tax extensions? Or does he want two, as Senator Lindsey Graham has been working on? Johnson replied:
Yeah, 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. 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 or very quickly and what we would call a skinny reconciliation bill and then do the rest of it in a larger chunk later. But I think 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.
Bartiromo asked, “So if you are doing everything or most of the priorities in one big beautiful bill, as you say, that includes what? Walk us through what that would include.”
Johnson said such a bill would cover border security, the budget, energy, the economy and taxes, and “dismantling the deep state.”
“So we’ll be working long, long hours with whiteboards, making sure every Republican is on board,” Johnson said. “Because remember, I’ll be dealing with the smallest margin in U.S. history for much of the first hundred days, but we’re gonna to get it done.”
Pressed on the matter by Bartiromo, Johnson added House Republicans would also seek to raise or eliminate the debt ceiling in the bill – something Trump wants. He said the
Bartiromo pointed out that a bill with so many moving parts risked alienating some lawmakers, which Johnson said he was not concerned about:
Well, actually, that’s the benefit of doing it all together, because no one’s going to love every element of a large package like that. But there will be enough elements in there to pull everyone along. They’ll be able to justify not getting all of their preferences on some of their big issues because there’ll be so many other very important pieces to that one piece of legislation. So I think keeping it together is how we’ll actually get it done, and there’s some real value to that.
Watch above via Fox News.