House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) promised a second Trump administration would roll back the Green New Deal and expand the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act if former President Donald Trump is elected.
Johnson, while warning that an economy under Vice President Kamala Harris would be “Marxist,” outlined Trump’s agenda for a GOP trifecta government during a speech and discussion with Fox Business Kudlow host Larry Kudlow at the America First Policy Institute on Tuesday. He said the former president and congressional Republicans would work on “day one” to implement five key priorities.
Listed in the economic agenda are plans to build upon the tax cuts in Trump’s 2017 bill, use the tax code to secure the border, roll back both the Green New Deal and the Inflation Reduction Act, reform the education system, and root out fraud and abuse by eliminating unessential bureaucratic jobs.
“For nearly four years now, the Biden-Harris administration has engaged in what we know is a big government socialist experiment, and they’ve done it at our peril,” the speaker said. “It was always doomed to fail. Those experiments always are, but they don’t look at reality all the time.”
Inflation and the state of the economy, including housing costs, are major campaign talking points for both Trump and Harris as they prepare for a competitive presidential contest this November. Harris unveiled her economic agenda in mid-August, with Republicans quickly looking to tie her to “Bidenomics” and the policy decisions made by the Biden administration over the last four years.
Johnson said he is “bullish” that Republicans will be able to keep the House and take the White House and the Senate in 2024.
“It’s a sad situation, and it doesn’t have to be like this,” Johnson said of the economy. “When it’s all added up, the Kamala Harris economy — Americans have reduced savings, greater debt, higher prices, and they have fewer full-time jobs and reduced paychecks. That is not a formula for success. We can not do this for four more years.”
Johnson echoed a moniker Republicans, including Trump and his running mate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), have used to claim her proposed policies will turn the United States into a communist country, calling Harris “Comrade.” The speaker noted that Harris’s call for price controls and blaming grocery stores for high prices is a “blame-shifting game.”
“That’s the other thing that Marxists do all the time,” Johnson said. “Socialists, they want the government to control everything, and they blame the producers.”
“The reason the costs are so high is obvious: It’s because of their drunken spending habits and the regulations they placed on every industry,” Johnson continued. “It costs more to transport goods to your grocery store because of their crazy Green New Deal mandates and all the rest. I mean, they create the recipe for the economic disaster, and then they blame it on the people who are trying to keep the economy going. It’s really cruel, it’s very immoral, and that’s why we got to stop them.”
During the discussion with Kudlow, the speaker said the country needs a “total refocus” and that the Biden-Harris administration has projected “weakness” to adversaries such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
“If we’re not strong, and if we do not project strength, and we do not send a chill down the spines of our adversaries, then freedom is endangered all around the world,” Johnson said. “A strong America is good for the whole planet. How do we fix it? Larry, we got to get Donald J. Trump elected president again. OK, they fear him, and our allies respect him.”
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The speech from Johnson comes as Republicans work to pass a spending deal ahead of a government shutdown next week. The speaker and other GOP leaders are planning to put a six-month continuing resolution, combined with the SAVE Act (a bill focused on election integrity), on the floor on Wednesday. However, large amounts of opposition from the Republican conference signal that the CR is likely to fail.
Trump and Vance have both said that Republicans should not fund the government unless the SAVE Act, which would ban noncitizens from voting in federal elections, is also included in the spending deal. However, the inclusion of the SAVE Act is likely to put off most, if not all, Democrats. With a four-seat majority and several GOP lawmakers planning to vote “no,” Johnson will likely need to come up with a new spending plan before funding expires at midnight on Oct. 1.