Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) said Monday that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) must lay out his plan to deliver on President-elect Trump’s agenda if he wants to secure her vote for Speaker.
In an interview on Fox News’s “Fox and Friends,” Spartz said she is looking at Johnson’s “track record” and thinks “unfortunately we will not be able to deliver on President Trump’s agenda ... if we don’t have a Speaker with courage, vision and a plan.”
“If Speaker Johnson wants to be Speaker, then he needs to lay out that plan and commit to that plan, not like what he did last year. He committed on the House floor to have a fiscal commission so we have a plan for debt ceiling increase, which President Trump is right about, we have no plan. He was afraid to put it on the floor. He was afraid to put budget on the floor,” Spartz said.
“Except [a] post office bill, we could not accomplish anything,” she continued. “So I can give him a chance, but I would like to hear from him, how he’s going to be delivering this agenda and what plan he has, and he hasn’t been doing it.”
The interview was conducted before Trump publicly threw his support behind Johnson’s Speakership bid.
"I understand why President Trump is endorsing Speaker Johnson as he did Speaker Ryan, which is definitely important," Spartz posted on the social platform X following that development. "However, we still need to get assurances that @SpeakerJohnson won’t sell us out to the swamp."
She shared a link to an article on Trump endorsing Ryan and the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2016 alongside the post.
In a statement released Monday, Spartz similarly laid out her requirements for Johnson to earn her vote, saying the next Speaker must commit publicly to “at least temporary structures” for authorizations, reconciliation offset policies and spending audits.
“The current STRUCTURES, with their perverse incentives, have not been working for decades and will not suddenly start working. We must have a vision and a concrete PLAN to deliver on President Trump’s agenda for the American people, which I have not seen from our current speaker despite countless discussions and public promises,” she wrote in her statement.
Johnson, who needs 218 votes for Speaker, cannot afford to lose support from any more of the 219 Republican House members. Democrats have made clear they will not back Johnson’s bid, and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has come out against Johnson for Speaker.
In the interview, Spartz said she was confident there would be a Speaker by Trump’s inauguration and said she knows of other members who could be interested in the job, if Johnson fails to get the necessary votes.
