Speaker Johnson: House Not Wed to Plan to Include Debt Ceiling in Reconciliation Bill

House Speaker-elect Mike Johnson (R-La.) speaks after winning the House speaker election during the first sitting of the 119th Congress in Washington on Jan. 3, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

WASHINGTON—House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on Jan. 14 that the House plans to raise the debt ceiling through reconciliation but suggested that could change.

“We’re socializing that among members,” Johnson said at an event hosted by Politico. “I’m not really wed to that, it was the initial idea. So we’ll see, we’ll see how it develops.”

Johnson said at the Politico event that it is not “completely foreclosed” that the debt ceiling increase will happen through reconciliation and that the House is “looking at all options.”

He appeared to also say that raising the debt ceiling will not be tied to federal assistance to deal with the wildfires in southern California.

“We don’t play politics with disaster aid,” he said.

Last week, Johnson spoke about a plan to increase the debt ceiling through reconciliation.

“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 get to determine the details of that,” he said at a Jan. 7 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 stead do it ourselves.”

An agreement was reached in December 2024, as part of passing a measure to fund the government at 2024 fiscal year levels through March 14, that the debt ceiling would be raised by $1.5 trillion alongside $2.5 trillion in cuts. At the time, President-elect Donald Trump wanted the bill to include an increase in the debt ceiling. That did not materialize.

In 2023, the House GOP passed along party lines a bill called the Limit, Save, Grow Act that raised the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion and included fiscal reforms. Congress ultimately passed a separate bill to suspend the debt ceiling through Jan. 2, 2025, following an agreement between former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and President Joe Biden.

The Freedom Caucus, a staunchly conservative bloc in the House, could negotiate an increase in the debt ceiling in exchange for certain measures in a reconciliation bill, the group’s leader, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), told The Epoch Times in November 2024. He said there are members who would not vote for a clean increase.

While the GOP has control of the House, its majority is narrow, meaning that Johnson will have to deal with conservatives who want cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling in the hopes of not jeopardizing his speakership.

Two Freedom Caucus members, Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Keith Self (R-Texas), initially did not vote for Johnson for speaker before changing their vote in the first round of voting.

The threshold to bring forth a motion to strip Johnson of the gavel is nine members. Under the previous Congress, it was just one, leading to McCarthy’s ouster as speaker in October 2023.