00:00Coming now in the Sunday Morning Futures exclusive is the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
00:04Mr. Speaker, thanks so much for being here this morning.
00:08Hey, Maria, good morning. Always a pleasure to be with you.
00:10Let me start with Russia because I know there's a lot of support in the Senate for this.
00:1480 senators or plus have supported potential sanctions on Russia and its energy.
00:21Would you take that up? Would you take that to the floor?
00:25I would. I think there's a big appetite for that in the House as well.
00:31I think tough sanctions are called for.
00:33I mean, Vladimir Putin has shown an unwillingness to work with President Trump to bring an end to this unjust war on Ukraine.
00:41And we've got to talk tough and we've got to act tough.
00:44That's what he responds to. He's a bully.
00:46And if you don't treat him as such, then he'll continue to run his rampage through Ukraine.
00:50And we've got to bring an end to that. We need peace in this conflict. It's long overdue.
00:54And of course, part of the money being allocated toward defense, an increase there, is in the big, beautiful bill.
01:02Congratulations to you for getting that over the finish line in the time that you promised, July 4th, the president signed it into law.
01:09Tell me how that money will be allocated with regard to defense.
01:13What do you want to see happen?
01:16Well, look, the big, beautiful bill was a landmark achievement.
01:19America first is no longer just an agenda. It's now the law of the land.
01:22And to your point, the big investment there was in border security and national defense.
01:27The bill did a lot of things, but this is really important.
01:30So this money will go to help us ensure the policy of peace through strength.
01:34We have to invest appropriately and smartly in our military industrial base right now.
01:39It's a dangerous world where our adversaries are China, Russia, Iran, North Korea.
01:43They've united together in so many ways.
01:45And we're showing everybody around the world, like that little clip you just showed from Prime Minister Netanyahu, that America's back.
01:51And that strength is what is going to maintain the peace.
01:54So these investments are important.
01:55It's in naval vessels and ships, in our new kind of warfare.
02:00And, by the way, there's an investment here in the Golden Dome, which will help us have real security in our homeland.
02:07So lots of things here, very strategic.
02:10We're spending the money efficiently and effectively.
02:12That's what the American people demand and deserve.
02:13And, of course, you and your colleagues were also able to stop what would have been the biggest tax increase that anyone has seen with the extension of the tax cuts.
02:23I want to get your take on what's next.
02:25Where does the legislative agenda go now?
02:28And are you expecting to do a second reconciliation package later on in the year?
02:34Yeah, we're implementing a playbook that we designed well over a year ago.
02:38About 15 months ago, we began this process, understanding and believing that we would win unified government,
02:43that we'd have the White House, the Senate, and the House in the Republican hands,
02:47and that we would not want to waste this historic opportunity with President Trump coming back to the White House
02:51and us having the responsibility of fixing every metric of public policy that Biden and Harris and the Democrats destroyed over the previous four years.
02:59So the big, beautiful bill was the first big step in that, but we have multiple steps ahead of us.
03:03We have long planned for at least two, possibly three reconciliation bills, one in the fall and one next spring,
03:10that would continue to allow us to do this on a partisan basis where we only need Republican votes and we don't have to drag Democrats along.
03:17They are in no appetite to fix any of the mess.
03:18We have to do it ourselves.
03:19So, yes, that's next.
03:21In addition to that, we will continue to get the country back on a path to fiscal responsibility
03:26by rescissions packages that will come from the White House and will enact and claw back spending
03:30and eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse in the multiple reconciliation packages
03:34and in appropriating at lower levels of funding.
03:37All these things will be done while we're codifying more of President Trump's executive orders.
03:41He's been very busy.
03:43We will be as well.
03:44We have a lot more work ahead of us.
03:45Well, it's a great point that you make because some people were critical of the fact that we haven't seen a lot of codifying
03:52in the Congress of President Trump's executive orders.
03:56Where specifically would you want to see that?
03:59Well, we did over almost 30 of them were included in the big, beautiful bill.
04:04So that was a lawmaking exercise.
04:05The president's now signed them into law and they're codified.
04:08So it's not a temporary thing.
04:09They'll be permanent in the law.
04:10And we've done a number of about 15 or 20 additional executive orders that we've already codified in the House.
04:17We'll continue that process.
04:19We wanted to get as many of them as we could into the reconciliation package
04:23because we knew that we were certain that that would actually be signed into law
04:26and it wouldn't just be a feel-good exercise.
04:28So more of that will continue going forward.
04:30The president's been one of the most prolific, I think arguably the most successful president,
04:34in the first six months of this term than any previous president.
04:37Look how many things have been accomplished.
04:39A lot of it's been done through executive order, so Congress has its role to play now as well.
04:43Well, that's a big message, an important message for you going into the re-election races next year.
04:49In terms of debt and the spending cuts that so many people want to see,
04:55that was really the pushback or the debate among you and your colleagues.
04:59Do you feel you have the support in terms of spending cuts?
05:02Should you actually get to do that second reconciliation package you're referring to?
05:06I do.
05:09Look, the Republican Party is the party of fiscal responsibility and we're going to continue to demonstrate that.
05:14In the big, beautiful bill, people call it a spending bill.
05:17It wasn't.
05:17The only increases in spending were for those two priorities, border and national defense.
05:22Everything else was carving back and saving money from the budget,
05:26which is why you call it a reconciliation bill.
05:28So we would have actually achieved, and we will, in excess of $1.6 trillion in savings.
05:34That is an historic number.
05:36No Congress, no legislative body in the history of the planet Earth has ever saved so much in a bill.
05:41Now, it's just the first step, though, Maria, as we point out.
05:44We have a $37 trillion federal debt.
05:46You and I talk about this all the time.
05:48We all do.
05:48And we have to have a combination of reduced spending and greater economic growth.
05:53We put jet fuel into the economy with the one big, beautiful bill.
05:56It will be that, and extraordinary growth.
05:58We're projecting 3% going forward and $4 trillion in new revenue just out of the legislation.
06:04But more is ahead, and the tariff policy and the other policies of the Trump administration have been wildly successful.
06:10In fact, we had a budget surplus, as you know, in the month of June, the first time since 2017 when President Trump was last in the White House.
06:16So more of that is ahead.
06:17Every American will feel it.
06:19And the big, beautiful bill was geared and written for lower- and middle-class earners in the country.
06:25They're going to be feeling really good as we go into that midterm election in 26.
06:28I'm really glad you mentioned the surplus.
06:29I was going to raise that because there was so much hysteria over President Trump's tariffs.
06:34And yet, look what it is getting you.
06:36$100 billion in tariff revenue on an annualized basis actually creating a surplus for the month of June.
06:42The last time we saw a surplus was the president's first term in 2017.
06:47But, sir, I want to switch gears and ask you a bit about the FBI and the DOJ because we still don't have enough information on the shooter.
06:56It is one year ago today that the president was shot out and, of course, got grazed and hit in the ear.
07:03And people are wondering why we don't have more information about this.
07:06I spoke with the FBI Director Cash Patel about it recently, and here's what he told me.
07:10Watch.
07:10Two reasons.
07:13Two open, ongoing prosecutions.
07:16So two of the investigations are obviously closed because the individuals are dead.
07:21But there's two live prosecutions.
07:25And so we can't get ahead of the federal court case.
07:29A lot of that information will come out in the federal court cases.
07:32But we have personally invested our time in making sure that we have looked at all the any possible international connections to terrorism and adversaries alike.
07:42And we've both been down to Quantico.
07:45Speaker, do you have any other information about this shooter?
07:50I don't.
07:51Look, you know, we had a bipartisan task force that worked in the House very, very quickly and looked very closely at what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania.
08:01The terrible mistakes that were made there, the errors.
08:03They came up with 30 recommendations to address those mistakes and ensure they don't happen again.
08:08We have new leadership, of course, at the Secret Service.
08:11We're counting on them to do that job, and I think they will.
08:13We have some very patriotic, faithful people who work in that agency.
08:16But they have a big task.
08:17So does DOJ, and so does the FBI.
08:20That work has to continue at a steady pace, and the American people deserve answers.
08:24There's more to come.
08:24Ms. Speaker, real quick before you go, I know you're waiting on the supplemental package for the emergency money, for the devastation and the tragedy in Texas.
08:33What's the timing on that?
08:35How much do you expect?
08:38Well, I know that we've got every available federal resource there working, and they're still in the recovery mode at the moment.
08:45It'll take a while to tabulate what the losses are.
08:47It was devastating, as we know, the loss of human life.
08:50Just unspeakable, the tragedy there.
08:52But the way the process works is FEMA has about $13 billion in a reserve fund right now.
08:57They have enough to do the work right now.
08:59We'll see when the White House comes forward, gets the final assessments from the state, what supplemental funding requests are made, and we'll address them appropriately.
09:07Mr. Speaker, it's great to have you this morning.
09:08Thank you, sir.
09:10You too.
09:11Thanks so much.
09:11Speaker.
09:12Thanks so much.
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