At today's House Republican leadership press briefing, Speaker Johnson was asked about his use of House rules.
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00:00Same to prevent resolutions of inquiry, including this probe into Pete Hexet, his use of signal.
00:06Why are you using the rules of the House to effectively protect Trump rather than let the House work its way?
00:12No, we're using the rules of the House to prevent political hijinks and political stunts, and that's what the Democrats have.
00:18As I mentioned, no leader, no vision, no platform. All they have is obstruction.
00:22They're trying to target. They showed us over the last four years, the last eight years.
00:26They used lawfare. They used conspiracy theories, all these political weapons to just go after the president and make his life miserable.
00:35That's not what the American people voted for. That's not what they deserve.
00:38We can do better, so we're preventing this nonsensical waste of our time.
00:42We don't have time to waste. We've got to, as I mentioned, we've got to fix every—
00:46But as we've discussed many times in this room, the executive branch has the constitutional and appropriate legal authority to address unfair trade practices with other countries.
00:55That's exactly what the president has been doing and is doing, and the results, I think, are going to be obvious at the end of this.
01:02We have to give them the runway. This is not a separation of powers concern at all.
01:07Congress has a role to play, but so does the executive, and I think everything they've done thus far has been entirely lawful and appropriate, and that's what our policies reflect.
01:14So we're going to continue to do that, and I think the American people are going to see the result at the end, and they're going to be quite satisfied by all this.
01:20Can you give a quick timeline on reconciliation?
01:24Yeah, I'll just say this. We're sticking to our plan.
01:26We had a big six meeting yesterday with Secretary Bessett and Kevin Hassett at NEC, Senator Crapo, who's the finance chair over there, Leader Thune, I, and Jason Smith, Ways and Means Chair, and we had White House folks there as well.
01:39And what we discussed was the timeline. As the Treasury Secretary Bessett has said a few times, he gave us credit for moving this so aggressively on this calendar.
01:51I'm really glad that we did because we've got to deliver this in the economic relief of the American people quickly. We've got to codify all this.
01:57We are on track to pass the bill out of the House, as we've said from the very beginning, and get it over to the next stage by Memorial Day.
02:04Now, I don't know how long the Senate's going to take to do their piece, but I was very encouraged after the meeting yesterday, frankly.
02:10Leader Thune and Senator Crapo are on point. The Senate Republicans have been working very hard together.
02:16We got almost a year ahead start on them on this process, so that explains the sequence of events.
02:21But we're going to get it done by Memorial Day. Senate over there. They take a couple few weeks to work through that.
02:27We merge this together. We get it to the president's desk quickly for signature.
02:30Secretary Bessett said yesterday a big celebration by July 4th. I hope it happens much sooner than that.
02:35And we're going to keep pressing aggressively in the House to make sure that happens. Thank you.
02:38And a debt limit included in that?
02:40Yes.