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unidentified
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| House Speaker Mike Johnson talked about the Republican funding measure that cleared the House of Representatives during a discussion at Georgetown Business School. | ||
| This runs about 20 minutes. | ||
| Thank you. What a day for you. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Literally, what, like two hours ago, the vote on the continuing resolution passed. | ||
| So I'm going to ask you to put on a professor's hat here and explain to our students what is a continuing resolution and why is it so difficult to get them passed. | ||
| Great question. | ||
| Can I say first, I'm so honored to be with you all. | ||
| They told me this is midterms week, so I'm duly impressed that you're here. | ||
| You just needed a distraction, I get it. | ||
| Mike has become a dear friend. | ||
| Thank you for the kind introduction. | ||
| And what an investment you've made here. | ||
| And Georgetown's reputation precedes it, of course. | ||
| And all of you are blessed to have this opportunity. | ||
| And I'm blessed to be with you tonight. | ||
| A CR, continuing resolution, has become a bad word in Washington because it's really not the way the government is supposed to work. | ||
| The way that Congress is supposed to work to provide the greatest amount of stewardship over the precious taxpayer money is that you're supposed to do 12 separate appropriations bills in the various divisions of the federal government. | ||
| And it's supposed to work its way through the process of regular order. | ||
| Remember how we learned when we were young, you know, schoolhouse rock, how a law becomes a, you know, a bill becomes a law. | ||
| The problem is that system is bogged down in recent decades and it doesn't really work that way anymore. | ||
| The committees, the appropriations committees get bogged down in their work. | ||
| It becomes a partisan, hyper-partisan exercise, unfortunately. | ||
| And all those bills don't make it over the finish line to be passed and exchanged between the two chambers. | ||
| So when you come to the end of fiscal year, you must take extreme measures. | ||
| And what that has become now routine is takes the form of a continuing resolution, a CR, which extends the funding of the government so that we don't have a government shutdown. | ||
| And a government shutdown doesn't behoove anyone. | ||
| It hurts everyone, ultimately, but most immediately it hurts, of course, federal employees, people like military service members who are serving. | ||
| They don't get a paycheck, you know, TSA agents, agents. | ||
| Long lines begin to form at the airports, border patrol agents, essential services, all these things become a real problem when the government's shut down. | ||
| So we passed a CR today. | ||
| It was a big feat because these are typically big, they wind up being bipartisan efforts. | ||
| Everyone's angry all the time because no one wants to do it. | ||
| You're forced into it. | ||
| But tonight we did what became a partisan exercise, not by design, it should not have been, but it was a clean CR continuing to last year's FY24 fiscal year 24 funding. | ||
| It was clean, so we didn't make any major modifications to it at all. | ||
| And I had hoped that everyone would vote for it, but my Democrat colleagues decided not to, save for one exception. | ||
| And they're doing that, I think, as a protest to what they dislike about the Trump administration and Elon Musk and everything else. | ||
| But we got it through the House. | ||
| Now it goes to the Senate. | ||
| And now it is the decision of one man alone, Chuck Schumer. | ||
| He's the Democrat lead in the Senate. | ||
| And he has to decide whether he's going to release enough of his votes to pass it, because the Republicans will vote for it, to keep the government open, or whether he wants to enter a shutdown period. | ||
| So let's see what happens. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| So what is included in the CR and what's not included? | ||
| And how is it going to impact the economy and businesses? | ||
| Well, if it passes, it will provide some stability because we'll do it. | ||
| You'll hear the term full year CR. | ||
| We go all the way through the end of the fiscal year, which is September. | ||
| So it will provide stability. | ||
| If it passes, it will provide some stability because we'll do it. | ||
| You'll hear the term full year CR. | ||
| We go all the way through the end of the fiscal year, which is September. | ||
| So it will provide stability in that regard. | ||
| Everyone will know what is being funded. | ||
| It has some great features. | ||
| The one change we made, one major change, was we added a little bit more for defense spending because we gave enlisted service members the highest pay raise they've had in 40 years. | ||
| We desperately needed that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| For those of you that serve, thank you. | ||
| There was at least one whoop out there. | ||
| And those persons have been underpaid for a long time. | ||
| We've had enlistment and recruitment numbers at record lows in recent years. | ||
| They're starting to come up again. | ||
| But we have an obligation to those who are willing to make the sacrifice. | ||
| But for the rest of it, the funding continues exactly as the government has been funded through this past fiscal year. | ||
| And so everything will keep in operation and you shouldn't notice any difference about anything. | ||
| So you all know we need stability right now in the marketplace and we need things to be stabilized across the board and having the government funded I think takes a level of risk out of the markets and it should help to stabilize things. | ||
| So you're obviously happy with the outcome today, but your work doesn't quite stop here, right? | ||
| And there's going to be the next thing and the next thing. | ||
| So budget reconciliation. | ||
| You and your colleagues in Congress are working very hard towards that. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| What do you want to get achieved? | ||
| What is likely to be achieved by when? | ||
| Great question. | ||
| So I can't rest on my laurels. | ||
| We had a big important vote tonight and everybody says, congratulations, and they high-five me and then I go right back to work because the next thing is budget reconciliation and this is going to be the heavy lift. | ||
| You've heard perhaps about the one big beautiful bill. | ||
| Okay, that's what this is. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it's going to be beautiful. | |
| It's going to be big. | ||
| We've got to do a lot in this bill. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So let me tell you what this is. | ||
| So normally, normally, you have to get 60 votes in the Senate, right? | ||
| So that's the threshold in the Senate to pass anything to get over the filibuster hump. | ||
| The founders put in a lot of safeguards in our system. | ||
| They didn't want both chambers of Congress to work quickly. | ||
| They wanted it to be slow and deliberate and lots of speed bumps in the way. | ||
| So the filibuster is a major speed bump. | ||
| The only way to get around that is to have 60 votes. | ||
| So anything of substance has to get that many votes. | ||
| Well, the Senate has been divided for many years. | ||
| And right now, Republicans have the majority, but they only have 53 votes. | ||
| So we're going to need seven more. | ||
| Well, the only way to get around the 60-vote threshold necessity in the Senate is through what is called the reconciliation process, budget reconciliation. | ||
| So we are reconciling a budget that has been previously passed by Congress. | ||
| So about three weeks ago, we passed the budget resolution that's sort of the starting gun for this process. | ||
| We passed ours. | ||
| The Senate passed their version. | ||
| We're going to sort of a little conference to merge the two together. | ||
| And then the reconciliation process begins. | ||
| Now, what we're going to do in this bill, the reason why I call it one big beautiful bill, is because we're going to try to achieve all of the promises we made on the campaign trail, all the America First agenda that we were elected to deliver. | ||
| We'd like to try to do it in this process so that Chuck Schumer can't stop us, right? | ||
| I mean, this is how it happens. | ||
| The Democrats use it when they have the opportunity, and now it's our turn. | ||
| So the challenge is to keep every single one of my cats herded in the right direction, okay? | ||
| Right now, I have a one-vote margin. | ||
| I have the smallest margin in U.S. history in the House. | ||
| So I spend half my day as a mental health counselor, honestly. | ||
| I just sit down with everybody and work through their problems with them. | ||
| But what we're going to hope to achieve is secure the border, make sure that that's done, because that's a high priority for most of the American people. | ||
| We're going to make sure the economy is revved up and going again. | ||
| A lot of instability, a lot of questions and concern right now, but doing the reconciliation bill will set us back on course for prices to come down, inflation to come down, and all the rest. | ||
| One of the things we'll do in this bill is extend the Trump-era tax cuts. | ||
| They will expire at the end of this calendar year. | ||
| If we don't do it, we're going to have the largest tax increase in U.S. history all at once. | ||
| I would rather not be in charge when that happens, so we're going to make sure that that is taken care of as well. | ||
| We're going to cut down regulatory red tape. | ||
| We're going to help to restore peace through strength by properly funding the military and prioritizing those things. | ||
| And many other things. | ||
| American energy dominance, again, we want to make sure we have our stature on the world stage and use every God-given resource that we have to make sure that's possible. | ||
| So all those things will be merged into one big giant bill. | ||
| It's going to take a lot of work to get everybody to an equilibrium point where the guys on the far right of the caucus and the guys on the far left of the caucus, the swing district folks, can agree. | ||
| So my job is to find the equilibrium point. | ||
| So I think of it metaphorically. | ||
| I get every morning and I have this giant sort of control panel. | ||
| And it's got 219 dials on it. | ||
| And I got to make sure everybody's, you know, okay, this one's going to be, you know, and then I got the President Trump dial. | ||
| And now I have the Elon dial, okay? | ||
| Because Elon has the largest platform in the world, literally. | ||
| And if he goes on and says something that's misunderstood or misinterpreted about something we're doing, he can blow the whole thing up. | ||
| So I spent a lot of time working with all these dials and all these folks, and I just run around all day and make sure everybody's happy. | ||
| And we're at the same kind of equilibrium point. | ||
| So this is not a job you should ever aspire to. | ||
| And I wouldn't wish it on anyone. | ||
| But I hope some of you will enter public service. | ||
| Maybe we can talk about that later. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, we're grateful you are doing the job. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| How are you thinking about the economy? | ||
| You mentioned the economy. | ||
| You want stability and uncertainty is a problem. | ||
| Where do you see the economy going? | ||
| Well, I think ultimately this is going to work out fine. | ||
| And why do I say that? | ||
| Well, I was a freshman in the first Trump administration, and you could feel however you do about President Trump. | ||
| No one can argue with his economic policies. | ||
| I mean, before COVID, if you can remember that far back, it seems like it was 20 years ago now, but this is 2019, 2018. | ||
| After the first two years of the Trump administration, we had brought about the greatest economy in the history of the world, not just the U.S. | ||
| I mean, that's a literal truth. | ||
| It was objectively a true fact because every demographic in America was doing better. | ||
| The economy was soaring. | ||
| We had more jobs being created. | ||
| We had wages going up. | ||
| The job participation rate was at an all-time high. | ||
| Unemployment was at an all-time low. | ||
| I mean, in every single demographic. | ||
| And the reason was, it's not a mystery. | ||
| We followed through on the policies and principles that we've always believed in as limited government conservatives. | ||
| What was that? | ||
| Well, we did tax cuts and regulatory reform. | ||
| Pretty simple. | ||
| We passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which are those provisions that are about to expire if we don't fix them now. | ||
| The TCJA, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, it's simply named. | ||
| President Trump named it. | ||
| We had a fancy name. | ||
| He didn't like it. | ||
| Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| That's what it is. | ||
| We got that done. | ||
| And then we did regulatory reform. | ||
| If you ask business owners, investors, job creators, entrepreneurs, risk takers, the people that really benefited by this, they will say that the tax cuts were really important to us, but the regulatory reform is what got the economy really humming. | ||
| Because we got the government off the backs of those people, entrepreneurs and job creators. | ||
| We let them build and reinvest and grow. | ||
| And that's what brought about the great success. | ||
| So I believe we can get to that again. | ||
| It's just going to take a little while. | ||
| Things are a little unsettled because President Trump, I'll give you a quick metaphor. | ||
| I think of it kind of like a pool game. | ||
| If you ever play billiards, right? | ||
| A pool game. | ||
| At the beginning, they rack all the balls in the middle of the table and it's very nicely set. | ||
| And somebody comes in and breaks it, right? | ||
| And that's what Trump does. | ||
| He's like the big cue stick, right? | ||
| Breaking this up. | ||
| All right. | ||
| They're all over the table, right? | ||
| There's a method to the madness because then a great pool player will then go with strategy and begin to strategize how each of the balls is placed strategically in the holes, right? | ||
| That comes next. | ||
| But he had to shake it up. | ||
| That's what this is right now. | ||
| And I have some faith that we're going to get this thing fine-tuned. | ||
| So the last few days, again, the students are very interested in financial markets and business, and we've seen a lot of volatility in the markets, and certainly in the last few days. | ||
| So how are small and medium-sized businesses going to raise capital when there's all this uncertainty out there? | ||
| Well, that's the key. | ||
| I think we've got to address the uncertainty. | ||
| I think we can. | ||
| This reconciliation process that I'm talking about, I have put it on a very aggressive schedule and timetable with this very problem in mind. | ||
| We've got to provide stability. | ||
| One of the things that small business owners tell me when I'm roving around the country is they say, I can't properly plan on expanding my business or adding employees or a new location right now because I don't know what my tax rate's going to be, you know, in nine months. | ||
| So to extend those tax cuts, we need to do that like ASAP. | ||
| We need to do it yesterday so that we can provide certainty to these people who are making big decisions for their investments and their strategy. | ||
| That's a pretty simple concept, but it's a difficult thing to deliver. | ||
| So the sooner we can get that done, the better. | ||
| I put it on a timetable where we're going to rush through all these things through the big, beautiful bill. | ||
| Every one of our committees will be working in their area of jurisdiction, developing the policy, putting the components together of this bill. | ||
| I would like to have it on the floor for a vote before Easter. | ||
| And then that means if you send it to the Senate, they could get their work done. | ||
| Potentially, we could get this to the President's desk for signature by the end of April or early May, certainly before Memorial Day. | ||
| That would be a huge thing for the economy, for people who are out there really struggling to try to make it work. | ||
| And I think it would begin to bring down prices and inflation as well, because that certainty will allow for the investment that will flourish and keep the economy going again. | ||
| And the sooner we do that, the better. | ||
| And I think we'll see an immediate effect. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| So that certainty is going to be an important thing to put into the marketplace. | ||
| You talked about regulatory uncertainty. | ||
| One of the areas our students are interested is in cryptos, digital assets. | ||
| What do you think is likely to happen there with stable coin bills and what the SEC gets to do, what the CFTC gets to do, what needs to happen through legislation? | ||
| Is there a timeline? | ||
| That's another thing, as soon as possible. | ||
| Now, I'm really heartened by the fact that this president has embraced this new digital currency and crypto and blockchain and all that. | ||
| We have an AI czar and crypto czar and David Sachs, who comes from the industry and is very knowledgeable and excellent at what he does. | ||
| They had the big gathering at the White House a couple days ago. | ||
| And the President said, in simple terms, he said, the people who will be regulating crypto now love crypto and they don't hate crypto. | ||
| As simple as that sounds, it's a pretty important formula. | ||
| People who will embrace the new technology and come up with really sort of a market structure framework that will help it to flourish. | ||
| We don't want other countries to jump ahead of us on this. | ||
| And certainly we're in a competition with China on everything. | ||
| It's a national security concern in some respect that we stay in front of them on AI and crypto and everything that comes from big tech. | ||
| And I think we have the right people in place to do that. | ||
| So they will help guide Congress. | ||
| You don't want to turn Congress loose to regulate something they don't fully understand. | ||
| So we had a... | ||
| We at the Pesaro Center are willing and ready to help them figure that out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you, thank you. | |
| We'll need it. | ||
| We'll need it. | ||
| There's a lot of interest. | ||
| The interest level is much higher than the understanding. | ||
| I don't mean just among Congress. | ||
| I mean among everyone. | ||
| And so we have a steep learning curve, education. | ||
| We're sort of blue ocean territory in some ways on this. | ||
| And so we've got to be careful. | ||
| We don't want Congress to over-regulate it. | ||
| We don't want to stifle innovation. | ||
| But you certainly do need some stability on a cryptocurrency that a lot of people don't fully even understand. | ||
| I have to ask you about the debt ceiling. | ||
| There always seems to be a problem there. | ||
| What is it going to take to prevent a crisis there? | ||
| It's going to take a vote. | ||
| We have to raise the debt ceiling again because we can't default on the nation's debts. | ||
| It would send a terrible signal to world markets and everyone around the world. | ||
| So the president talks about this a lot. | ||
| And it's going to take a big vote to extend it for four or five years. | ||
| Now, here's the thing. | ||
| We have a $36 trillion federal debt. | ||
| I'm one of the, we call ourselves deficit debt hawks. | ||
| I'm a hawk on this. | ||
| I am deeply concerned about the nation's debt, and all of you should be as well, because it's not just about the economy. | ||
| It's actually a national security concern. | ||
| I served on the House Armed Services Committee, one of the committees I served on before I became Speaker. | ||
| And we'd routinely bring in leaders from the Pentagon and top military leaders, and we would say, what is the greatest threat to our national security? | ||
| And they would never say China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. | ||
| They would say the national debt. | ||
| Because if you can't fund your military, right, then you're in trouble. | ||
| And we're being outpaced. | ||
| China is almost a peer-to-peer adversary to us in terms of military. | ||
| And we've got a lot of catching up to do. | ||
| So we have to address the national debt. | ||
| But while we're doing that, while we're working to bend the curve of spending and reduce spending to stabilize our national economy, bring fiscal sanity back, you have to raise the debt limit at the same time, even though you intend and will spend less, because you have to send a signal to the world that we will never default on our debts. | ||
| America never has, we never will. | ||
| But that's a tough vote for people to take. | ||
| President Trump is going to come out full force and say, we have to raise a debt limit, but I have no intention of spending more. | ||
| We're going to spend less, but we have to do that, take that important step if we get close to the limit so that the world will know that America is still on top. | ||
| And I think we'll get that done. | ||
| So one last question before I open it up for questions from students. | ||
| At Georgetown, we believe in being women and men for others. | ||
| Many of our students are really passionate about making a difference. | ||
| What advice would you give to the young people here in the room who want to consider a career in public service? | ||
| Great question. | ||
| You know, let me just, can I just speak frankly with you all and tell you that if you feel like you have a heart for public service, I encourage you to do it. | ||
| We need good men and women in the arena. | ||
| And I know I'm preaching to the choir here because you're at Georgetown and I know the caliber of people that you are, but some people enter public service with the wrong motives. | ||
| I would say check your motives, right? | ||
| It's often said that in politics, people get involved for different reasons. | ||
| It's somewhere on a sliding scale between I want to do something and I want to be somebody, right? | ||
| The people who are way over here on this side, we don't need them and we don't need them running for office because we need people who are selfless and want to serve others. | ||
| And, you know, Georgetown has a rich history in the Jesuit Catholic tradition, and scripture teaches that the greatest among you will be the servant of all. | ||
| And if you go in with a servant's heart, as I know all of you have, you can do really well for your community, for your state, you know, your nation. | ||
| And we need people like that who have the right. | ||
| To summarize it briefly, I would say we don't need any more politicians. | ||
| We need statesmen and stateswomen. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| There's a big difference. | ||
| We need people who have the heart for others and for a country and that they're willing to self-sacrifice to do it. | ||
| And if you go in with that, you will be set apart because it is uncommon. | ||
| It is less common than the other. | ||
| And people will notice that about you, and you will earn, I'll just be very frank, you will earn the favor of God and man. | ||
| That's a biblical admonition and one that works well with. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a big unwind. | |
| And the terrorists, we've got strategic industries we've got to have. | ||
| We want to protect the American worker. | ||
| That a lot of these trade deals haven't been fair. | ||
| But I can tell you what's not good for the economy is this government shutdown. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know what Democrats are thinking here because they're going to own it. | |
| And to the extent that it hurts competence, hurts the American people. | ||
| We have had incredible Republican unity since January 20th. | ||
| And the fact that the Democrats are in disarray, they're flailing, and this is the best they can do. | ||
| That I think this is the economic story for the next few days. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not the terrorists. | |
| Not for the next few days. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If they want to take us into a shutdown, they're going to own it. | |
| What plans is the administration making for a shutdown? | ||
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| This morning, a confirmation hearing on the nominations of Pete Hookstra to be Ambassador to Canada, George Glass to be Ambassador to Japan, and Ronald Johnson to be ambassador to Mexico. |