Mike Johnson touts new GOP agenda under Trump: ‘We’re going to be dismantling the deep state’

Fresh off his reelection as speaker, Mike Johnson hyped up Republicans’ ambitious agenda for the new year and pledged to take aim at the “deep state” through their legislative endeavors.

Johnson (R-La.), 52, previewed plans to bundle a sprawling slate of reforms on taxes, energy, the border and more into a mammoth package and take it up for a vote in April.

“It’ll have a lot of pieces. We have made a lot of campaign promises,” Johnson teased on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“And we’re going to be dismantling the deep state all along the way.”

Johnson huddled with his House Republican colleagues in Fort McNair, Maryland for almost nine hours Saturday to map out their strategy to pass President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda in the new Congress.

The rough plan is to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, key provisions of which are set to expire later this year, and make good on campaign promises such as eliminating taxes on tips and Social Security while raising the cap on the state and local tax deduction.

The package will also feature legislation inspired by what Republicans previously drafted to bolster border security and ramp up energy production.

The GOP will seek to wrangle it through the Senate via a process known as budget reconciliation to bypass the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster.

Republicans also intend to separately pass smaller bills aimed at addressing the border, which Johnson described as “low-hanging fruit” before taking up the mammoth bill.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SC) had pushed for Republicans to split the package into two bills: one to deal with energy and the border, and another to tackle taxes. But Trump has since favored the single-bill approach.

“No one’s going to love every element of a large package like that,” Johnson explained. “But there will be enough elements in there to pull everyone along.”

House Republicans were notoriously chaotic during the prior Congress, ousting former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and navigating deep divisions on key budget fights.

Johnson faced headwinds in his quest to win reelection as speaker. Initially, three House Republicans voted against him during the speakership contest Friday, but two later reversed course after Trump called in and pressured them to come around, giving Johnson the votes he needed.

Now Johnson faces the daunting task of working to coalesce his fractious caucus around Trump’s agenda and is hoping to give Trump a breakthrough legislative win during his first 100 days.

He also has one of the smaller margins in the lower chamber in US history, which appears likely to briefly slip to a one-seat majority early this year.

Jam-packed timeline

The newly reelected speaker revealed that he is hoping to get the monster bill to Trump’s desk in April.

“We’re targeting a vote in the House maybe in the first week of April,” Johnson said, pointing to April 3 as a specific target date while calling Memorial Day a “worst case scenario” deadline. “Then move it over to the Senate.”

But before Republicans can get to that, they will have to contend with another government shutdown fight. The latest such deal, which passed Congress last month, kicks the can down the road until March 14.

Republicans feuded bitterly the last time around, and only got a stopgap spending patch over the finish line thanks to support from Democrats.

Congress will also have to grapple with the debt ceiling.

Under the last agreement — the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 — the debt limit was suspended until Jan. 1. Due to the various complexities of government spending, Congress is not expected to have to re-up the limit on the country’s borrowing authority until June.

Trump has called for eliminating the debt ceiling altogether, something that a contingent of hardcore Republicans in the House oppose, but Democrats have expressed openness towards.

Johnson indicated that he wants to lump legislation that deals with the debt ceiling into the broader package on Trump’s agenda.

“I think we’re going to have to do it in that bill,” the speaker explained “[so] that we won’t have to negotiate with Chuck Schumer and the Democrats.”

“We will have very thoughtful discussion and debate about where that limit should go,” he added. “We’re the team that wants to cut spending, and we will. And we will do it dramatically — all the wasteful spending in government.”

After dealing with those issues, Congress will have to either pass a government funding package for fiscal year 2026 or a short-term stopgap to avert another government shutdown by Sept. 30.

“Remember, we did this in the first Trump administration. We brought about the greatest economy in the history of the world before COVID because we reduced taxes and we reduced regulations,” he said.

“That’s the basic formula. But the sooner that we do it, the better.”