The relatively inexperienced speaker has focused more on social issues than on economic policy during most of his career on Capitol Hill.
By Jacob Bogage, The Washington PostHouse Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson on Capitol Hill on Thursday. He has long fought a cultural battle, using his faith to guide his political decisions about same-sex marriage and abortion rights. MUST CREDIT: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post
Johnson must lead the volatile Republican conference through those fiscal fights, the same battles that led hard-liners to oust his predecessor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy , who focused much of his speakership on federal spending and had reached, then discarded, an agreement with the White House on overall spending levels for the year.
Colleagues say that Johnson gained a reputation as a fiscal wonk during his tenure as chair of the Republican Study Committee, a conservative policy caucus, from 2019 to 2021. There he backed policies to raise the eligibility ages for Social Security and Medicare, increase Medicare premiums and extend Trump-era tax cuts for corporations and wealthy earners.
“I don’t think anybody can be taken really seriously if they say that they want to extend those tax cuts, add more on top of them, and also somehow say that they care about the deficit,” said Samantha Sanders, director of government affairs and advocacy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. A new sign is installed above the entrance to the office of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023, at the Capitol in Washington. Republicans eagerly elected Johnson as House speaker on Wednesday, elevating a deeply conservative but lesser-known leader to the seat of U.S. power and ending for now the political chaos in their majority.
But Johnson is a skeptic of the effort to fund Ukraine and voted against bills to provide $40.1 billion for Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion in 2022 and another $300 million in 2023. Support for Ukraine has faded within the House GOP’s ranks. Rep. Glenn Grothman , who has voted repeatedly for Ukraine aid, told The Post that he would not vote to approve the next package, citing a perceived lack of clarity as to the Biden administration’s plan to end the fighting. That dents the pressure from within the GOP that the White House and Senate hope to use to compel Johnson to put Ukraine funding up for a vote, where it would be expected to pass with Democratic votes.
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