The Signal in the Noise: Speaker Mike Johnson on Elon, the Big Beautiful Bill, and “Our Chance to Save Our Country”

>> Peter Robinson: Axios. He has few enemies. Commentary Magazine. Perhaps, his most important strength is his likability. New York Magazine. The nice guy who finished first. But all that was before Elon Musk put up a certain post on X. The 56th speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, on Uncommon Knowledge, now.

 

Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge, I'm Peter Robinson. A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, James Michael Johnson earned both his undergraduate and law degrees from Louisiana State University. Then worked for the Alliance Defense Fund, an organization devoted to defending religious freedom, free speech, and the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.

 

In 2017, Mr. Johnson was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives. Two years later, Louisiana's 4th congressional district, located in the northwest part of the state, sent Mr. Johnson to the US House of Representatives. And in late 2023, Mr. Johnson's fellow Republicans elected him speaker of the House.

 

He has held the gavel ever since. Mr. Speaker, thank you for permitting us to join you here in your chambers. By the way, I should note that I was here once before, half a century ago, when I met Carl Albert.

>> Mike Johnson: Wow.

>> Peter Robinson: And I was in the high school program.

 

Carl Albert of Bug Tussle, Oklahoma, I believe that was his hometown. All right, thank you for making the time. The 119th Congress Republicans hold 220 seats in the House to the Democrats, 212, I think that's the current count, the Democrats couple have died.

>> Mike Johnson: Yes.

>> Peter Robinson: All right, you preside over the narrowest Republican majority in the House of Representatives since 1931, and that makes your job impossible.

 

Nobody can move legislation through a chamber when he can only afford to lose three votes. But you've done it. And on May 22nd, you found the votes to pass President Trump's one big, beautiful bill act.

>> Mike Johnson: The bill is passed.

>> Peter Robinson: Which you have now sent to the Senate.

 

It passed by one vote. Everything looked done, and then earlier this week, Elon Musk put up this post on X. Quote, I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. And since then, Elon Musk has issued a number of calls to kill the bill.

 

Here's a second quotation, this is you. We worked on this bill for 14 months, you can't go back to the drawing board, and we shouldn't. We have a great product to deliver here. All right, that part of the country that pays any attention at all to politics is watching this go back and forth, scratching its head.

 

A great product?

>> Mike Johnson: Yes, indeed. Peter, welcome to the ceremonial office of the Speaker's Chamber here, I'm glad to have you, big fan and glad to be with you, thanks for the opening. It's been very confusing for me, Elon, I count him as a good friend, I've gotten to know him well over the last many months since he's jumped on the Trump train and was part of the team.

 

And I mean, we traveled together, I've visited with him a lot and had talked him through what we were doing with the one big, beautiful bill, the necessity of it. Remembering as I reminded him and reminded him even in the last couple of days, this is not a spending bill.

 

He keeps calling it a spending bill, it's not, it's a budget reconciliation bill and it's a critically important one. A couple of things for everybody back home to understand. Why do we talk about budget reconciliation? Well, this is the only exception to the normal rule that you would need 60 votes in the Senate to pass substantive legislation.

 

It's a critically important distinction right now because the margins are small in the House and the Senate. Chuck Schumer and the Democrats are in no mood whatsoever to help deliver the Trump agenda, right, the America first agenda, which we all promised everyone. And this is the vehicle to do that.

 

Because when you are reconciling a budget, you only need 51 votes in the Senate. So, we're trying to put everything into this that we can under the rules of the Senate. And the Byrd rule is something people will hear a lot about. You can't do big policy changes, you can only do things that reduce the deficit, reduce the budget.

 

So, in that effort I foresaw, many of us believed that we would have this moment of unified government. I forecast this early last year on the campaign trail, and I told my colleagues that we gathered all the committee chairs in the House together. Steve Scalise, the leader here, majority leader, and I as the speaker, we gathered all of our Republican chairs together and we said, our dear friends, we are gonna win the House, the Senate, and the White House.

 

President Trump is coming back and we cannot be caught flat footed as we were in 2017. If you remember, no one thought President Trump would win the first term. Everybody assumed Hillary Clinton was gonna be the president. So, my predecessor at that time, Paul Ryan, who's a brilliant guy, great guy.

 

He and the others, the leaders in the Senate, they were not prepared for the moment that was delivered when we had unified government and we had this opportunity to change everything. I was a freshman back then, and was frustrated that it took so long to get going.

>> Peter Robinson: You saw it all happen.

 

 

>> Mike Johnson: So I determined on myself back then, I was kicking rocks as a freshman, mumbling to myself, man, if I'm ever in charge, we'd never be in this position. Of course, I had no idea that this would come, but. So in March of last year, 2024, we gathered all the chairs together and we said, guys, we're gonna have an opportunity to do an historic piece of legislation through the budget reconciliation process.

 

We believe we'll have unified government, we'll have majorities in both chambers and President Trump in the White House, but we believe those majorities might be small. So let's think now, strategically, about what would be our top priorities in each of your areas of jurisdiction, come up with your top five to ten, the best things you could deliver on all of our promises.

 

That's where this began. So the genesis of this big, beautiful bill began 14 months ago.

>> Peter Robinson: In this chamber?

>> Mike Johnson: In this chamber. And we worked slowly, methodically, just as the framers intended for the process to work, and the consensus building operation that we have with the smallest margin in history.

 

We had a one vote margin for much of the first hundred days of this Congress, but we delivered that product. And what's in it is incredible, it is truly historic. Historic level of tax cuts and a historic level of savings, which I keep reminding my friend, Elon and others, we're gonna deliver, by our estimates, $1.6 trillion in savings.

 

There has never been a legislative body in the history of mankind that's delivered $1.6 trillion in savings.

>> Peter Robinson: Now, when you say if, excuse me, let me just play the layman here.

>> Mike Johnson: Sure.

>> Peter Robinson: So when you say savings, that's not cuts?

>> Mike Johnson: It's a combination, combination. So, here's what's in the bill, I'll tell you that and then how we get there.

 

So we have, if we don't deliver, if we don't make the tax cuts permanent from 2017.

>> Peter Robinson: There's a tax hike, effectively.

>> Mike Johnson: Largest in history, it'll happen by default at the end of December when the tax cuts expire, so we must do that, but we want to deliver savings as well.

 

We also have to have border security, we have an historic level of investment in border security because that was the number one issue in the election. The last administration opened it wide, so we have to repair all that. We have a big investment in our military industrial base, why?

 

Because we're in a very dangerous time and China and others are our competitors. Then we also do no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, we have tax relief for seniors. All the things the president promised in the campaign trail, we've got all that woven in, American energy dominance will return.

 

Cuz we have regulatory reform. We're gonna restore peace through strength. And we're gonna strengthen and preserve the programs that people rely upon so much, things like Medicaid and SNAP that our vulnerable populations need. We're gonna secure and strengthen those programs by eliminating fraud, waste and abuse. So many other things.

 

All of that, the reason the president named it the One Big Beautiful Bill is because there's so much in it. And we have to deliver that and we have to do it ASAP because the people need that relief. It's gonna be jet fuel to the US Economy, so we got to do it now.

 

 

>> Peter Robinson: Okay, so if I may ask a few more questions here. By the way, in the old days I interviewed Milton Friedman. And Milton Friedman not only sat there and listened to the questions, but he would rewrite. He would say, no, no, no, you should be asking this, and then he would answer.

 

So correct me if I'm missing-

>> Mike Johnson: I'm not Milton Friedman, but I'll.

>> Peter Robinson: No, but if I'm missing something. So, can you explain to me as a layman, you mentioned Reconciliation Bill is the only Bill in which the Senate does not require 60 votes for cloture. You mentioned the.

 

And an ordinary American is saying, why do these guys operate under all of these strange arcane rules? And I guess the answer is Article one of the Constitution of the United States establishes President comes second, he's Article two. Article one is the Congress of the United States. What goes on here matters.

 

 

>> Mike Johnson: Right.

>> Peter Robinson: And because it is a large body, it has to have rules. If it didn't have this set of rules, it would have another set of rules. And what this set of rules has to be said for it is that people understand them. They've been in place for a long time now.

 

Is that correct? Is this the way?

>> Mike Johnson: That's a good summary. Look, we live in the greatest country in the history of the world. It's not even close, it's objectively provable. We're the most free, most successful, most powerful, most benevolent nation that's ever been. Part of the reason for that is cuz I believe the founders were divinely inspired to set up the system that we have.

 

We separated the powers. We did something no nation had ever done before, we created a government, truly and literally of, by and for the people. We were moved, we don't have a monarch, no king, we have a constitutional republic. But we're still an experiment on the world stage.

 

You're only 250 years into this, almost, and we don't know how long it'll last. But the structures they put in place are critically important. And this institution, while not perfect, is the best one in the world. It's the greatest deliberative body on the planet. The House and Senate operating as they do with the separation of powers, as we have, and with the checks and balances and with all these, these safeguards that were built in.

 

Now, they're frustrating sometimes because they seem archaic. And it takes a long time to move legislation, it takes a long time to build consensus, especially when you have small majorities. But you have to appreciate the genius of what this is. And it's created the greatest economy, the greatest nation, the strongest nation.

 

So we respect it, even though we're frustrated by it sometimes.

>> Peter Robinson: So you got, I'm wondering if you can take us through a little of the practical politics. You got this thing, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act by one vote. So now, Elon, others in the press, I don't wanna put words in Elon's mouth.

 

There's a lot out there on my X feed. I can only imagine what's on your X feed.

>> Mike Johnson: I don't read it.

>> Peter Robinson: It seems to suppose that you have the power to tell these guys how to vote, and that of course isn't so.

>> Mike Johnson: No.

>> Peter Robinson: These are independent human beings.

 

What was it Sam Rayburn said that being speaker of the House is like trying to keep 435 frogs in a wheelbarrow? Okay, so generally as an over, I just wanna see if I understand the practical politics in brief. On the one hand, you've got plenty of conservative Republicans who want cut, cut, cut.

 

On the other hand, you've got more moderate Republicans. I'm thinking of two or three who come from upstate New York who have older populations that they're representing, who would be more frightened about cuts in Medicaid, Medicare. Who are saying, fellas, if we cut any more deeply, I'm gonna lose my next election.

 

And you can't get anything done if we lose this majority, correct? Those are the two poles between which you have to maneuver.

>> Mike Johnson: Yes-

>> Peter Robinson: Is that right?

>> Mike Johnson: Yes, and even more dynamics. When the great speaker Sam Rayburn said that in the early 1950s, that was before the 24-hour news cycle when every individual member had their own brand, their own comm shop, their communications operation, their own production companies.

 

And everybody is on social media and they're trying to feed the beast every five minutes. And they can go on every 30 seconds, literally, and explain what they're disgruntled about in a particular piece of legislation. None of those dynamics were present in previous generations of Congress, so it makes it very difficult to keep all that together.

 

Yes, we have a very diverse Republican majority. There are members who are elected, for example, in districts that are rated R plus 26, means they lean far to the Republican side, deep red districts. And I have members in our conference who are elected in districts that weigh heavily Democrat.

 

They defy gravity and defy the odds to be elected. So they look at the same set of problems with very different lenses. They represent very different constituencies in many cases. And there's a wide range of opinion. People say all the time, how come the Democrats all stick together and Republicans don't seem to?

 

The answer is pretty simple, Democrats really do think and act like an union. They are kind of socialist in their philosophy and their ideology, and they clump together and they take orders and they're pretty monolithic. We, on the other hand, are very rugged individualists and deeply rooted in our philosophy and our principles.

 

And I'm one of those guys, and I appreciate that, until you have a one vote majority, right? So the delicate balance is, as you say, on a Bill like this. You have the fiscal hawks, and I'm one of them. I lose sleep over the national debt. And I know that we've got to turn that trajectory.

 

This Bill is a historic step forward in doing that. But then you also have persons, as you said, who are in very tough reelect situations every two years. They feel like they can't cut anything from government because it'll be a political backlash. And when the margin is so small, if we lose the majority, it will be a disaster for the country.

 

Because if the Democrats took over in 2026, in the midterm, they would impeach President Trump on the first week of Congress. We've already seen the movie, right? So everything would be-

>> Peter Robinson: Two years of wasted time.

>> Mike Johnson: Totally wasted time. The economy would be destroyed. It would be a disastrous situation.

 

So we have to not only deliver on the legislative agenda, we have to keep the politics in central focus as well. And I've got to make sure that we win that midterm election and grow the majority so that we can give President Trump four years, not just two, and we can deliver on this step-by-step process that we've designed.

 

 

>> Peter Robinson: So, you said several times now that this Bill is actually gonna reduce the deficit, not add to it. A lot of people don't think so, so let me set up the figures and give you a chance to answer. The figures run as follows, you have all this stuff memorized, you live it every day.

 

The federal deficit during the current fiscal year is going to come in at $1.9 trillion. Total federal debt, $36 trillion, about a 100%. This is on the most conservative estimate I could find. About 100% of GDP, by far the highest since the Second World War.

>> Mike Johnson: Mm-hm.

>> Peter Robinson: By the way, nobody can blame you for that.

 

 

>> Mike Johnson: Took a long time to get in this issue.

>> Peter Robinson: Exactly, then we come to the question of scoring. Let me set this up because it's so easy to get lost in quite complicated matters. But this is one where we do have to spend a little time on it because it's become an issue in the last 48 hours.

 

 

>> Mike Johnson: Right.

>> Peter Robinson: The Congressional Budget Office says the BBB, the Big Beautiful Bill, will add 2.4 trillion in debt. I beg your pardon, to the debt over the next decade. The Office of Management and the Budget, the White House is scoring up or Operation has just come out with a new score that says no, it, it will do just what you said a moment ago, cut 1.6 trillion over the same period.

 

As best I can make it out, I'll set this up and then give it to you. One component of the new OMB scoring involves these Trump tax cuts of the first term, and it says those should be treated as base, as settled policy. Not a new, fair enough, not anything new.

 

But one component is that the tariffs will bring in federal revenues. And I have to say that got my attention because here we have Russ Vogt, the director of OMB, and by all press accounts, a fiercely, if not deranged conservative. And yet on tariffs, every economist will say, all right, so foreign governments or foreign entities may pay some portion, maybe even most of the tariffs, but the American people will pay some.

 

And Russ Vote of all people is coming forward and saying, no, no, no, no, no, we're going to be getting the deficit under control. And one way we're going to be doing it is by taking even more money from the American people for the federal government. So even on this argument that you're going to be cutting debt over the next decade, there's something very disheartening right in the middle of that, isn't there?

 

 

>> Mike Johnson: So.

>> Peter Robinson: Talk me out of it.

>> Mike Johnson: Yeah, there's, this is pretty easily explained.

>> Peter Robinson: Okay, go slowly for me, who you're talking to here.

>> Mike Johnson: The, the cbo, the Congressional Budget Office is supposed to be a neutral arbiter. They're supposed to be nonpartisan and all that, right?

 

There was a study that came out about a month ago, a Government Accountability Group, and they went to check into the backgrounds of the actual number crunchers at CBO. And 84% of them are died in the bull its donors to Elizabeth Sanders and Bernie. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and the others.

 

So set that aside, their assumptions are incorrect and the CBO is historically inaccurate when it comes to projecting growth in the economy. They do some things, okay but anytime they're doing an analysis on tax cuts, they always and every single time underestimate the effect that that will have in the economy.

 

They did it during the TCJA when we passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs act, the signature piece of legislation. The Trump administration, the two years, Mr. Speaker.

>> Peter Robinson: They did it in the 1980s during the Reagan period, I remember that, all right?

>> Mike Johnson: I was talking to Newt Gingrich the other night.

 

He said they did it to us in the 90s. They dramatically.

>> Peter Robinson: There's a history here.

>> Mike Johnson: They missed the analysis on the TCJA, the Trump tax cuts by $1.5 trillion with a T, okay? Because they underestimated the growth that would be brought about by tax reduction and regulatory reform.

 

We're gonna do that same thing this time on steroids, right? Cuz President Trump had four years to think through this and plan it. We did as well and the big beautiful bill takes the same principles and policies of the tax cuts and jobs act of 2017, but expands it dramatically.

 

So we have a massive collection of pro growth policies in the one big beautiful bill we believe, I know that they are dramatically underestimating the growth that will be brought about in the economy. To get our fiscal house in order, we have to do two things. We have to reduce spending, which we are and we have to foster true growth in the economy again at rapid levels quickly and so that it's sustained.

 

This is what that will do. They are assuming and that number, the CBO put forth an anemic 1.8% growth rate over 10 years. Never in US history have we sustained less than 2% for 10 years. It's just not even real. They're discounting the growth and they are not making any account whatsoever for tariff revenue or the new trade agreements, the fixing the imbalances, none of that, that's all off the table.

 

So, it's a very myopic and I think very close minded view of what will accomplished here. Russ Vogt, to your point, runs the Office of Management and Budget. He's probably one of the greatest known fiscal hawks in America and rigid about these things. And he's done the math and carefully calculated that what we're saying is true.

 

We are basing this not on hopeless groundless optimism but what we experienced in the first Trump administration. Everybody will remember before COVID I mean it seems like 20 years ago now but the first two years of Trump administration because of those pro growth policies, reducing taxes, reducing took off like a rocket.

 

We had the greatest economy in the history of the world. Everybody was doing better, every demographic. More jobs, more opportunity, higher wages, more job participation. We're gonna do that again, but we're gonna do it on steroids.

>> Peter Robinson: The tariff revenues don't bother you?

>> Mike Johnson: Look, I'm a Reagan Republican and you know that.

 

Always fashion myself that way and one of our core principles is free trade. But every time I would talk to President Trump about it over the last nine years he would say free and fair trade. Fair point, right? Look, there was a blind spot that many of us Had Peter.

 

Like, we were still living in the relic of the World War II era. If you think about it, after World War II, America emerges as a superpower. Europe has to be rebuilt. Everybody does all the trade arrangements and agreements. And they said, well, Americans can afford it, we can't.

 

Let's charge them a massive tariff and they won't do it to us. And so there's this huge disparity that was out there, and in some. Some places, over 100% difference between the tariffs. The president's 100% correct on that, and what he's done to shake it, while it made people nervous initially, it's gonna pay off now, and we didn't have this massive increase in inflation and consumer prices that everybody projected.

 

And I think it's settling out in time to have done, to have met the objectives and to get us in a better position. It's gonna be good for the country.

>> Peter Robinson: All right, here you are on X. I'm quoting you again. And here you are replying to the charge that the BBB, Big Beautiful Bill did not codify the Doge.

 

The cuts, the waste, the fraud and so forth. The Doge identified. You're rolling your eyes.

>> Mike Johnson: Yeah because.

>> Peter Robinson: You've only answered this one 300 times but let's take it. The House is eager to act on Doge's findings. We will do that in two ways. One, when the White House sends its recision package to the House, and a first rescission came up here yesterday, I believe.

 

 

>> Mike Johnson: Yes.

>> Peter Robinson: Two, the House will use the appropriations process to implement President Trump's 2026 budget. So let's take those in turn. You're arguing, folks, I'm a conservative. I promise you, this is the best bill we could have gotten, and it's actually pretty good. But it's just the beginning, correct?

 

That's the form of your argument.

>> Mike Johnson: That is it.

>> Peter Robinson: All right.

>> Mike Johnson: Yes.

>> Peter Robinson: So rescissions and then the appropriations.

>> Mike Johnson: Very important to understand why that is, because we were talking about the archaic rules, okay? So, when you're doing a budget reconciliation bill, which is what the one big, beautiful bill is, you cannot make changes to discretionary spending.

 

So, what the Doge cuts have been focused on is those areas. There's two categories of spending in the federal government. Mandatory spending is on the program. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.

>> Peter Robinson: Two thirds of the federal budget.

>> Mike Johnson: Exactly, it's 73, 74% of spending, which is on autopilot, which is frightening, okay?

 

That's something we have to address and we have a plan to do it. But right now when you're doing, when you're reconciling the budget, you can only deal with those categories. We don't have any ability to handle discretion spending changes in reconciliation. So it was never possible.

>> Peter Robinson: So it's impossible under the rules.

 

 

>> Mike Johnson: So, the way we're gonna codify the Doge Savings, which I am a big fan of, I mean I've celebrated Elon's efforts. It's heroic and patriotic. He and I worked on this together. I went and met with him in early February when he was just getting started. And I said, Elon, there's a three step process for us to be able to make this permanent, not be a flash in the pan, right?

 

We have to codify this. But to codify it, we have to first qualify and then quantify and then codify what you're finding. To Elon's credit, I mean he did something unprecedented and there was no playbook for how to take that and turn it into legislative text. So we developed that over the last few months.

 

And that first rescissions package is coming from OMB Russell. They've done the. Qualify and quantify part, now we're ready to codify.

>> Peter Robinson: By the way, where does the qualify and quantify exist? Is that at OMB? OMB and Treasury?

>> Mike Johnson: Well, Doge says, hey.

>> Peter Robinson: Do you have people working on it up here?

 

 

>> Mike Johnson: Yes, it's a combination, it's a lot of moving parts to this. But, in short summary, in layman's terms, Doge says, hey, we found these atrocities, overspending, fraud, waste and abuse. We're gonna send it over to you, make sure our math is right and we got the right accounts and they do all that and it's all verified in that way.

 

And then it's set up, and then Office of Management Budget does another calculation to say, okay, well that's right, we shouldn't have been funding transgender operas in Peru under USAID, right. We obviously did not intend that. It was not the intention of the Article one branch of Congress.

 

We gotta call that back. So, a rescission package has been sent to us. It's foreign aid spending that was.

>> Peter Robinson: Largely USAID.

>> Mike Johnson: Yes, largely that and then Corporation for Public Broadcasting because NPR and PBS have been abusing the system for quite some time with their non-objective coverage, etc.

 

So, that comes over to us for Congress to then evaluate and vote upon and, and we're going to pass that and we'll be able to claw back those savings. That's the first of a series of rescissions package that are being planned because they're doing the qualify quantify on other Doge savings and other things that Russ Vote and OMB were already planning.

 

We're gonna do that. Then we have the regular, the actual spending bills, the actual appropriations process, right, where we're going to spend less because now we have new analysis. See, what I told Elon is what's really great about the Doge effort is that it's a new paradigm. It's a paradigm shift because the framers of this grand system we have, they wanted a small federal government.

 

They wanted most of the power reserved to the states. As we know, that's our system, right in federalism, and for the federal government to do its limited number of responsibilities, they expected Congress to have careful oversight over what was done. The problem is for lots of reasons over the decades Congress got less and less oversight ability because the bureaucracy grew and they began to hide the data.

 

So, look, we've tried, I've been in Congress nine years. We try to do oversight in our areas of jurisdiction. We ask the agencies to come in and testify. We look at documents, we look for the. We've subpoenaed information before.

>> Peter Robinson: And they just stiff you, essentially.

>> Mike Johnson: Well, they just don't show us all the detail that Elon was able to find why?

 

Because he got inside the belly of the beast. He had access to the real accounts and he has magic algorithms crawling through the data to find irregularities. Never had that capability. The technology didn't exist before, and we never had a person with that kind of stature with the impromptu of the President who was bold enough to do it, to actually crack the code and they did.

 

So, it's changed the way accountability in government works, and we're gonna continue that as a theme going forward.

>> Peter Robinson: So, could this question of continuing Doge's work. Could we pause on that for just a moment? So, the big news is that Elon has gone back to Austin to run Tesla and SpaceX, which everybody knew he was going to sooner or later.

 

And then there's this. I feel, I live in California, but I could almost feel Washington heave this sigh of relief. And yet, on the other hand, I know, for example, because he's a friend of mine, there's a young brilliant tech guy called Sam Corcos who's now been made Chief Information Officer down at treasury.

 

And the Secretary of the treasury thinks very highly of this effort and the notion that the IRS needs updated systems, that there's. In other words, as best I can tell, there are Sam Corcoses or versions of him who came to this town with Doge and are either still with Doge or have already been brought into the departments.

 

So it really is. Well, you use the term paradigm shift. That's not just fancy talk. There are people in place who are gonna continue this effort, correct?

>> Mike Johnson: Yes, and I told Elon, and we've had delightful conversations about this, I said, Elon, you think of this as a data analyst and a scientist.

 

I look at it as a constitutional law attorney and a historian, a legislator. This is about more than saving money. We're gonna restore the framers' original vision for how this was supposed to work. You're gonna you all are gonna leave behind this new paradigm that will allow Congress to have actual oversight again at a real granular level where we can actually do line-by-line auditing of the government, right.

 

That hasn't been a thing here for quite some time, as amazing as that sounds. So it's true and it will continue. And it's larger than any individual, it's larger than Elon, it's a new system that is put in, and it's an efficiency, streamlined system. So, the exciting thing about it is now also there's at the state legislative level around the country, state legislatures, like in my home state, Louisiana, are creating DOGE committees.

 

They're doing it at city council levels in my state and others. So it's brought about a new awareness and a new sort of expectation of accountability. And now that we have the technology, we have the algorithms and the things that can go through the data, we don't have old books and paperwork in warehouses anymore.

 

Now it's digital. We can actually do this again. And I think it's an incredible innovation. It happened at the perfect time. And we give credit where credit's due. Elon deserves credit for being bold enough to set that up.

>> Peter Robinson: All right, the BBB is now over in the Senate.

 

The GOP holds a majority of three seats in that chamber. I count, you're better at counting these people than I am out in California. I count four Republican senators who have already expressed serious reservations. Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, and Rick Scott. Lose all four of those, and that bill goes down.

 

So, you're looking at me as though, how could you ask such silly go ahead.

>> Mike Johnson: No, it's not so.

>> Peter Robinson: What's so.

>> Mike Johnson: There are others, too. I mean, there are others that have considerations.

>> Peter Robinson: Here's the question. So, Elon puts up that tweet. You've explained why he's missing certain things.

 

He should know better. On the other hand, he's riled up a lot of people in the conservative direction. Have the politics now shifted such that the GOP on the other side of this building can get deeper cuts than you were able to get, is it, no.

>> Mike Johnson: Well.

 

 

>> Peter Robinson: And if they send something back to you, are you gonna be able to get through the House?

>> Mike Johnson: So, you were alluding to this when we began about in a deliberative body like this, we don't get our personal preferences very rarely. I mean, I never get 100% I want on a piece of legislation.

 

I am a deficit hawk. I came to Washington to change the trajectory of debt because I'm worried about my children's future. We all should be, right. We have a plan to do this, but I can't do it tonight. My friend Ron Johnson over there, for example, he'd like to cut $8 trillion from the federal budget tonight.

 

So would I, but I'm about 170 votes short of that, right? So, the reality of a deliberative body. Where you have to be in the consensus building business is what we do here every day is you've got to see what is possible and not what is preferable to everyone.

 

And so look, I know all those folks you just listed very well and many of them are close friends and understand exactly where they are. They feel as I do. But, but remember the House worked on this for about 14 months before the final product. They're gonna all go through five stages of grief, each of them.

 

I mean you have Susan Collins and Murkowski on the other side, right? They're all, can I tell them how this is gonna go.? But.

>> Peter Robinson: Is John in touch with you? Is the leader in this?

>> Mike Johnson: We're one team approach here.

>> Peter Robinson: Because his job is almost as miserable as yours.

 

 

>> Mike Johnson: We empathize daily. And I was over, I had lunch with the Senate Republicans two weeks ago, on Tuesday, two days before we passed the bill in the House on that Thursday. And I told him, I said I'm gonna deliver this product at the end of this week.

 

I don't even think half of them believe me that they didn't think it was possible. But I said just on the outside chance I'm right, okay, I'm gonna send you a product that is very delicately, very deliberately negotiate associated. There's a very careful equilibrium here, understanding I have more than 170 additional personalities than you do to deal with over there.

 

And it took us a long time to get there. And I said I'm crossing the Grand Canyon on a piece of dental floss here, okay. I know you have lots of preferences and you'd like to improve the legislation, and I would welcome you to do that. But you have to recognize you cannot modify it much because if you load me up on one side or the other, I'm going We're not gonna cross the canyon and all of us fall together, you understand, because the entire agenda is wrapped in this legislation.

 

The entire Trump agenda, the entire America first agenda, all the promises we've made. And if we fail in this endeavor, it means, remember, the importance of reconciliation, 51 vote threshold in the Senate. If we don't succeed in this, we're gonna run out of time, the tax cuts will expire, largest tax increase in US history, debt cliff comes upon us about mid to late July.

 

We will have no foreseeable way out of that dilemma. The Democrats are not gonna help on any of these substantive matters. And all the beautiful policies, things that are entwined in this, we're in serious trouble. And so, I think they recognize the reality of that. And at the end of the day, I will never ask any of my colleagues, I tell them this all the time.

 

I will never ask you to compromise any core principle, but you are going to have to compromise your preferences because that's the way this works.

>> Peter Robinson: All right, Mr. Speaker, one, give me a moment, if I may, to set up one last question about this overall question of spending, if I may, let me begin with the clip.

 

Let me show you a brief video clip, on the classic.

>> Milton Friedman: As I said before, keep your eye on one thing and one thing only, how much government is spending, because that's the true tax. Every budget is balanced. There is no such thing as an unbalanced federal budget.

 

You're paying for it. If you're not paying for it through it in the form of explicit taxes, you're paying for it indirectly in the form of inflation or in the form of borrowing. The thing you should keep your eye on is what government spends. And the real problem is to hold down government spending as a fraction of our income.

 

And if you do that, you can stop worrying about the debt.

>> Peter Robinson: All right, you know this well, but I just have to lay it out one more time. Economists such as Milton Friedman, from whom we just heard, have been telling us for half a century that in the end all that matters is spending.

 

The government will either have to raise taxes, or borrow the money, or inflate the currency to cover the the spending. And yet spending has grown and grown and grown, I sit here as an eyewitness to the Reagan administration. And even Ronald Reagan was only able to contain the growth in discretionary spending by about a percent a year.

 

And the non-discretionary, the entitlement spending just continued to grow. And it's not just conservatives who are calling for cuts now. Here's the Wall Street Journal, just a couple days ago, quote, JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon delivered a dire warning for the markets, predicting a crisis unless the US takes step to address its spiraling national debt.

 

Quote, you're going to see a crack in the bond market, Dimon said it's going to happen, close quote. Okay, all that. Now listen, if you will, to a piece of a press release that Chip Roy of Texas released after voting for your big beautiful bill. This is Chip Roy of Texas, Republican Chip Roy of Texas.

 

After much deliberation, I voted yes, my fellow budget hawk colleagues and I forced reforms, we accelerated Medicare work requirements, we helped stave off further Obamacare expansion. We began to claw back the Green New Deal. And you know, Chip Roy, as far as I know, is a very good man, and a thorough conservative, I read that and my heart sank because I thought, no.

 

Even Chip Roy is forced to say just the kind of thing Republicans have been saying for decades now. The bus is headed toward a cliff, but don't worry, with us in charge, it's driving more slowly. So it's one thing for you to say to your colleagues, it's not a small thing, but it's one thing for you to say to your colleagues, trust me, I'm an honest broker here.

 

I'm going to help us achieve what we can achieve as a group. It's another and really much more solemn, even more solemn thing for you to find yourself in the position you're in right now, which is saying to the American people, trust me.

>> Mike Johnson: Yeah.

>> Peter Robinson: Make me believe that we can.

 

 

>> Mike Johnson: I'm so glad you gave me the opportunity to do that. And I'll cite Friedman, and Dimon, and Roy in my answer. Okay, I'm gonna modify your metaphor a little bit, we're not in a bus. I use the metaphor of an aircraft carrier. Okay, that my son just finished his freshman year at the Naval Academy.

 

 

>> Peter Robinson: Congratulations.

>> Mike Johnson: Thanks. We were studying for his, they have to study all the details of the big naval vessels, right? And it's fascinating, get into that. An aircraft carrier does not turn on a dime, it's a massive vessel. It takes a mile of open ocean to turn it when it's at high speed.

 

And so, that's what the US economy is in my mind. We did not get in this situation overnight, it took us quite a bit of time to get here. You mentioned in the Reagan years he was trying to work on discretionary spending. Since that time, the discretionary spending pie has shrunk and more of it has become mandatory spending, which is on autopilot to your point.

 

The mandatory spending is what is the real problem, but it's the third rail of politics that no one wants to touch. We have a plan for that as well, but I would just say, I'm a devotee to Milton Friedman, as we all are. And he was right, he's exactly right, it is that simple, government spending is the problem.

 

I had dinner with Jamie Dimon on Tuesday night, Jamie Dimon is a supporter of our big beautiful bill, a vocal supporter. He's been out saying that, because he understands it's a generational shift. We haven't turned the wheel on that aircraft carrier in decades, not in any meaningful way.

 

This bill truly is the first big turn on that wheel to begin the aircraft carrier going like this. Chip Roy is a dear friend of mine, we agree 100% on the principle and the policy. His tactics are sometimes different than mine. He has a little more luxury to do and say things that I don't cuz I got to get everybody there at the end of the day.

 

But Chip and I have talked about this late into the night, many nights since we've been here together. In fact, he was assigned to be a mentee of mine when he came in as a freshman. We have lots of history together and I love him, but Chip and I agree.

 

We have a multiple step process to do this. We are the party of fiscal responsibility. We are the party, the only ones, the Democrats do not seem to about the debt. They will spend us into oblivion, which is how we got into this situation. The last four years, and Biden Harris was a, spent like drunken sailors, right?

 

So, we have to get this thing corrected, we have a plan to do it. The big beautiful bill is a very important first step in that saving $1.6 trillion is a big thing. But scaling down the size and scope of government at the same time, that's how you reduce spending.

 

The DOGE effort is part of this, the President's effort of scaling down the bureaucracy and cutting back the departments and the agencies. We're gonna do everything we can in the discretionary space. And you're gonna see that as continuing theme through rescissions, through the appropriations process, through how this Congress operates so far as long as I'm at the helm.

 

And then we have a plan to address the larger mandatory spending and we have to do it, it has to be bipartisan because it's gonna require that. But you need reasonable, honest people who will look at the situation and say, we can make minor modifications to the programs that don't disenfranchise or leave anybody out, but we have to do it.

 

If we don't, they're going to be insolvent. We're within about an eight year wind for Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid, for that matter, to be insolvent so that the people that rely upon it don't have those resources anymore. Congress has an obligation to fix it. Congress has had that obligation for decades, but it hasn't been done.

 

And so, we're gonna have to build into the membership the understanding and the resolve to do the right thing. And I am committing that, we will do that, we will be fiscally responsible. This big beautiful bill is a very important first start in that. And I hope everybody will dig in and understand enough to recognize and appreciate what we're trying to do here.

 

 

>> Peter Robinson: All right, I have a couple of last questions, but I'd like to extract one more promise from you. Save the country, that's fine, but when you get to dealing with the mandatory, with the non discretionary spending, will you sit down with me again?

>> Mike Johnson: Sure, we're going to need lots of discussion.

 

 

>> Peter Robinson: I would imagine. I would imagine. All right, so you've said several times, time, time, time you can't move the aircraft carrier all at once. It's a big vessel. It requires persistent effort. Politics. As you well know, one of the most persistent patterns in politics is that in off your elections, the President's party gets, loses.

 

 

>> Mike Johnson: In fact, only twice in 90 years has a sitting president's party picked up seats in that first two years.

>> Peter Robinson: Okay, and in President Trump's first term, Republicans lost over 40 seats in this chamber. You can't afford to lose 40 seats.

>> Mike Johnson: I still have PTSD from that experience.

 

 

>> Peter Robinson: Okay, on the other hand, the Democratic Party, all the polling shows that the Democratic Party is in it. Speaking of history, we are there for sure if you just look at poll numbers, if you look at charts, this moment is anomalous.

>> Mike Johnson: It is.

>> Peter Robinson: So do you believe you can succeed?

 

You're going to survive the midterms?

>> Mike Johnson: We're going to thrive in the midterms. Let me tell you why. Two quick.

>> Peter Robinson: You really believe it. I'm looking at your eyes, that is not a man spinning me.

>> Mike Johnson: I absolutely believe that's going to happen. And they underestimate me every day around here.

 

And I'm telling you.

>> Peter Robinson: I'm listening. You've got my attention.

>> Mike Johnson: There's a couple of very simple, logical reasons why we will defy history and we will grow the majority in the house in 2026. Two quick reasons in summary, and I can give you a 90-minute slide presentation on this if we have time.

 

But we experienced a true demographic shift in the 2024 election. We are in unprecedented times. We had a record number of Hispanic and Latino voters, black and African American voters, Jewish voters. Union workers who came to the Republican Party not reluctant, came with hopeful anticipation because the Democrat Party left them behind.

 

The woke progressive left went too far. They pushed that pendulum too far and they lost a lot of their folks. They came to us. I was talking to Newt Gingrich the other night on the phone and he said. Mike, I know you're mired in the daily management of all this, but he said you should zoom out for a moment and consider the historic significance of where we are.

 

This is not unlike Reagan in 81. We have these new groups that came, if we deliver and demonstrate for them the they made the right choice, that it really is our conservative common sense policies that lead to human flourishing. It's better for individuals, families, states and the nation as a whole, their communities.

 

They will stay with us and we can have a durable, governing, common sense majority for 10 years or longer. This is how you change a country. Okay, so we had a demographic shift and I believe we're going to hold the big beautiful bill is geared for lower and working class Americans.

 

They are going to receive the greatest amount of tax relief and experience in that economy, that growth economy, more jobs and opportunity and stepping up on the next rung in the ladder. This is going to be a good thing for us, that mood going into that midterm cycle.

 

And the other thing is, providentially, we have the most favorable election map that we faced in decades. And what I mean by that is, as you and I are sitting here talking this morning, there were 13 House Democrats sitting in districts that President Trump won. There were 21 House Democrats in districts he came within five points of winning.

 

Conversely, there's only three House Republicans sitting in districts that Kamala Harris won. So it's a totally lopsided map. Gives us an offensive opportunity to go and flip those seats. And one of the other things I'm doing in addition to the legislating and the politics and the fundraising, we're doing candidate recruitment right now.

 

We're in that phase and we are recruiting workhorses and nacho ponies around the country in these districts to flip them. Extraordinary people who are bringing extraordinary talent. I'm convinced we're going to grow the majority by winning those seats.

>> Peter Robinson: Mr Speaker, your staff is just off camera. Apparently you have a large institution to run.

 

So I have just one last question, and you may limit it to one word if you'd like to. To my astonishment, the man who has the worst job in the United States of America appears to be enjoying himself. Is that true?

>> Mike Johnson: It's about perspective it's not an easy job.

 

I'm a wartime speaker. I have been in fifth gear since October 25th of 2023. I know there's no break. There isn't. You can't, I can't take my hand off that wheel on the aircraft carrier for one second. But I understand that it's a duty and a calling that's how I see it.

 

And I'll leave you with this. My great solace is what John Quincy Adams said. He was the hellhound of slavery. He was president, but then he came to serve in the House because he wanted to eradicate slavery. And he kept bringing the resolution over and over to end it, and he kept failing.

 

And as the story goes, I know where he was sitting, allegedly or by legend in Stat hall, the old House chamber. When a younger member of Congress went up to him and said they still called him Mr President. Why are you doing it? The resolution is going to fail again.

 

Why? And he said, young man, duty is ours. Results are God's right. It's a great liberating way to live and that's my perspective. And so I'm trying to be a happy warrior like Reagan taught us to do. And I'm convinced America is the greatest nation in the history of the world.

 

I'm convinced that God has given us another chance to save it. And that's why I keep doing this job and keep smiling. They can't bring me down.

>> Peter Robinson: Mike Johnson, 56th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Thank you.

>> Mike Johnson: Thank you.

>> Peter Robinson: For Uncommon Knowledge, the Hoover Institution and Fox Nation.

 

I'm Peter Robinson.