Despite Trump’s Support, Speaker Johnson Likely Doesn’t Have the Votes To Be Re-Elected, Conservative Lawmaker Warns

A conservative House member, Congressman Chip Roy, is warning that Speaker Johnson likely does not have the votes to be re-elected to a second term, saying that the speaker’s perceived mistakes in recent months have cost him support among the right flank of the conference as the House majority winnows to just a few seats. This comes despite President Trump throwing his support firmly behind Mr. Johnson in recent days.“I remain undecided, as do a number of my colleagues, because we saw so many of the failures last year that we are concerned about that might limit or inhibit our ability to advance the president’s agenda,” Mr. Roy told Fox News on Tuesday. “I don’t believe he has the votes on Friday.”Mr. Johnson, who is a staunch Christian conservative from the Deep South, has found more success than Speaker McCarthy did in managing his conference, but is facing the same intractable situation his predecessor did — a narrow GOP majority and a meaningful number of conference members whose principled and uncompromising insistence on fiscal discipline have made the House largely ungovernable and gridlocked.Mr. Roy, along with a number of his colleagues, have expressed concerns about Mr. Johnson and his ability to deliver conservative results. Congressman Thomas Massie — who has already said he will not in any circumstance vote for Mr. Johnson to be speaker again — said on X on Monday that the speaker’s support for sending billions of dollars in foreign aid to countries like Ukraine and Israel was a betrayal of voters’ trust. Mr. Roy on Tuesday highlighted Mr. Johnson’s recent government funding deal made with Senate Democrats that would have kept the lights on through March and included more than $110 billion in hurricane disaster aid and relief for the agriculture sector. That original bill failed, though the House passed a nearly identical government funding bill just days later after the legislation was cut in the total number of pages, but not in total cost. Speaker Johnson talks to President Trump as they attend the 125th Army-Navy football game at Northwest Stadium on December 14, 2024 at Landover, Maryland. Getty Images“I like Mike, he’s a good friend, but let’s consider what happened the week before Christmas,” Mr. Roy said, referring to that government funding agreement. “We had to have Elon and Vivek and the president and JD come in and kill a 1,500-page monstrosity to cut it down to 100 pages.”“That’s now how we should do business. We racked up $300 billion in additional deficit spending after the election. We’ve spent $1.7 trillion last year with more Democrat votes than Republican votes. We gave another $61 billion to Ukraine,” Mr. Roy added. Several Republicans have said they have not yet made up their minds about how to vote on Friday when the new Congress convenes to elect a speaker. President Trump’s endorsement may not be enough to secure Mr. Johnson’s hold on the gavel, with a number of GOP lawmakers coming out afterwards to say that they still had not seen enough of a game plan from Mr. Johnson himself. Congresswoman Victoria Spartz — who will not attend conference meetings or sit on committees in the 119th Congress in order to avoid the “circus” of Congress — on Monday released a list of demands for Mr. Johnson. Speaker Johnson walks to the House Chamber from his office at the U.S. Capitol on December 20, 2024 at Washington, DC. Kent Nishimura/Getty Images“Congress has abandoned its constitutional duty to the American people to properly oversee the spending of their hard-earned money paid as taxes. Our next speaker must show courageous leadership to get our country back on track before this ‘Titanic’ strikes an iceberg at any moment,” she wrote in a statement on Monday. Ms. Spartz demanded that strict rules be put in place for the House majority with respect to spending authorizations and debt, cost offsets for party-line spending and tax bills, and the use of outside firms for government audits. There are at least 12 other Republican members who have yet to publicly commit to support Mr. Johnson on Friday, most of whom come from the conservative House Freedom Caucus. The chairman of the group, Congressman Andy Harris, said after the government funding bill passed just before Christmas that he was “unsure” about how he would vote on Friday. So far, there are nine other Freedom Caucus members who said they remain undecided. In order for Mr. Johnson to be elected speaker again, he must win 50 percent of all voting members, plus one. On Friday, it is expected that just 434 members-elect will show up for the speaker vote, though Congressman Matt Gaetz — who resigned in November and said he will not return for the 119th Congress — may yet appear. If that 434 total vote number stays the same, then Mr. Johnson will either have to win 218 votes from fellow Republicans, or he will have to cajole a few colleagues into voting “present” so that he can win the speakership with 217 or 216 votes. Democrats will control 215 seats starting on Friday.

Despite Trump’s Support, Speaker Johnson Likely Doesn’t Have the Votes To Be Re-Elected, Conservative Lawmaker Warns

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