While Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision is being decided, the man himself is making some engaging commitments. On Friday morning, Speaker Johnson went to X to announce one thing: working with Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to hopefully bring federal spending under control.
However, there is one aspect of American fiscal responsibility, viz The speaker doesn’t mention it.
The American people have demanded an end to the status quo and a return to fiscal sanity. That’s why the citizens of our great country gave President Trump the White House and Republicans control of both chambers of Congress. If we don’t keep our election promise…
– Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) January 3, 2025
The speaker explains:
Republicans have a real opportunity in the next two years to enact meaningful spending reforms to eliminate trillions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse and end the weaponization of government. In addition to advancing President Trump’s America First agenda, I will lead House Republicans to reduce the size and scope of the federal government, hold the bureaucracy accountable, and put the United States on a more sustainable fiscal path.
The details are encouraging and DOGE’s tasks are long overdue; The question remains whether the Republicans in the House of Representatives, from whom the spending bills come, will follow the DOGE recommendations and wield an ax rather than a scalpel. The speaker continues to explain some details:
As a speaker, I commit to the following:
1. Create a working group of independent experts – not corrupted by lobbyists and special interests – to work with DOGE and our committees to implement recommended government and spending reforms to protect the American taxpayer.
2. Charge this working group with reviewing existing audits of federal agencies and facilities established by Congress and submitting a report to my office for publication.
3. House committees conduct aggressive authorizations and appropriations reviews, and also provide additional resources as needed, to uncover irresponsible or illegal practices and hold accountable agencies/individuals who have used the government as a weapon against the American people.
That all sounds good, but of course everything is subject to a vote in the House of Representatives. Finally, all spending must come from the House of Representatives.
What is not mentioned anywhere in this statement is the federal debt, which At the time of this writing g is 36 trillion US dollars. Nevertheless, reducing spending – not reducing the rate of augment, but reducing the amount spent – could go some way to addressing this problem. As the venerable saw goes, “When you’re in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging.” Under the Biden administration, federal spending has swapped the shovel that Washington used to drive us into debt for a steam shovel , and we hope that DOGE and the novel House of Representatives will take over. Maybe Washington will finally stop digging between the two.
See related: Washington is the largest landowner in the world. Can federal land sales pay off the national debt?
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Dealing with excessive expenses is good. It’s something that needs to be done, and it’s just not possible to reduce enough; not in the current political environment. We should and must discuss closing entire government agencies. We can hope that this is on the table. That remains to be seen.
However, there must be a plan in place to not only stop the debt from increasing, but also pay it off and eliminate it over time. This is the downside of reducing spending, and without both aspects we have no financial responsibility. The out-of-control federal debt is inflationary; Right now we are adding another trillion of debt every 100 days. Of course this cannot continue; We are heading toward a national debt crisis that could devastate not only the American economy, but the global economy as well. We can grow out of it, we can bloat, or we can reject it; The last two options would be ruinous.
The speaker’s X post concludes:
If we want to restore fiscal responsibility, we must first create transparency about the money spent, address the problems identified, and then hold accountable those who misspent funds. Republicans are charged with implementing the America First agenda, and as Speaker, that will be my priority.
That all sounds good – but we also need a plan to reduce the federal debt. The alternatives do not bear consideration.
