Speaker Johnson discusses the debt ceiling and entitlement programs: “The Republican Party is not going to cut benefits.”

On 1/7/2025, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said congressional Republicans plan to increase the nation’s borrowing limit as a part of a massive party-line bill they are crafting that will encapsulate President-elect Trump’s legislative agenda.

The plan would address Trump’s concern about Democrats using the debt limit as a leverage point during his administration, as Republicans did with President Biden in 2023. The massive bill of Trump priorities that Republicans are planning will go through a special process called reconciliation that bypasses the need to get 60 votes in the Senate for passage.

“The intention is to handle the debt limit in reconciliation in the process, and that way, as the Republican Party, the party in charge of both chambers, we then get to determine the details of that,” Johnson said in a press conference. “If it runs through regular order or regular process and as a standalone, or as part of the appropriations, for example, then you have to have both parties negotiating, and we feel like we’re in better a stead to do it ourselves,” Johnson added.

Johnson acknowledged the range of opinion on the debt limit within the House GOP. “There is a broad range of opinion on that in our own conference. We are working through that,” Johnson said. Asked about potential cuts to entitlements, Johnson reiterated Trump’s promise to not cut Social Security benefits.

“President has made very clear, Social Security and Medicare have to be preserved,” Johnson said. “No one is coming in with the intention of cutting benefits in any way or anything. But we have to look at all spending and look at it very literally, while maintaining those commitments. The Republican Party is not going to cut benefits.”

“We do know, however, at the same time, there are many, many areas of fraud, waste and abuse. The government is too large. The agencies are too many. They have too many divisions and employees and all the rest. And there will be a very deliberate auditing of all of that in various aspects as we go through the process,” Johnson said.

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Speaker Johnson: Intention is to increase debt limit in massive Trump agenda bill, not cut benefits