It appears Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t yet have the votes to become Speaker again in 2025 and the vote is coming up this Friday.
He’s already being opposed by Rep. Thomas Massie and that’s the only vote he can lose. The House will have a majority of 219-215 after Matt Gaetz resigned, so he needs every other vote to have 218.
But there is said to be multiple other members who haven’t yet committed to vote for him and one of those is Victoria Spartz, who released this statement today detailing a few demands, which I have highlighted in bold:
“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. Severe fiscal calamities often lead to unrest and more government control.
If we are serious about governing, our next SPEAKER must COMMIT PUBLICLY to create at least temporary structures in the House for: 1) authorizations; 2) reconciliation offset policies, and 3) spending audits. We also need to engage competent, unbiased “non-swamp” professionals to help us to at least start getting us gradually out of this serious fiscal mess.
The current STRUCTURES, with their perverse incentives, have not been working for decades and will not suddenly start working. We must have a vision and a concrete PLAN to deliver on President Trump’s agenda for the American people, which I have not seen from our current speaker despite countless discussions and public promises.
The fate of our Republic is at stake and Congress, the ARTICLE 1 BRANCH, with its supreme powers of creating laws and managing our nation’s finances, must start fulfilling its CONSTITUTIONAL DUTIES – not selling out our Republic at the expense of our children.”
There may be as many as ten who won’t commit to Johnson, so he and President Trump have some work to do to make this happen by Friday. Otherwise it will likely be another protracted battle for House Speaker – as we saw when Johnson was voted in as Speaker earlier this year.