October 25, 2023
We have a House Speaker. Finally.
On the first ballot this morning Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana secured the gavel.
The final vote – 220- 209.
Overnight, the conservative who is endorsed by former President Trump was able to flip the Republicans who voted against him during the nomination process late last night. And if you don’t know who he is, how he votes or what he’s all about – don’t worry I saved you the google search check out this video I posted late last night.
So you may be wondering — what are his plans now that he’s the Speaker?
We don’t have to guess – because he wrote a letter to his Republican colleagues and all of us and outlined everything this morning.
In that letter now Speaker Johnson says republicans have a lot of work to do immediately.
That’s an understatement.
The first order of business – is figuring out how to keep the government from shutting down in less than three weeks. Speaker Johnson’s letter says he is going to push his Republican colleagues to pass the remaining appropriation bills that lay out how government funding is spent in each of the departments. A handful of those bills are still not passed and if that’s still the case by the next scheduled shutdown on November 17th, Speaker Johnson suggests passing another continuing resolution to keep the government open temporarily with spending status quo until either January 15th or April 15.
After that’s done the letter lays out a month by month “to do list”. The plan is to basically start working on the next government spending plan that will be due on September 30 of 2024. The last item on the to do list – from October of 2024 to December – in all caps…”expand our majority.”
