Speaker Johnson: We’ll Probably Have 2 Reconciliation Bills, Haven’t Decided if Tax Plan Is Done Right Away or We Wait

During an interview aired on Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) said that “There probably will be at least two reconciliation packages. So, the determination right now is, where does the tax piece fit in? Do we do that first, out of the gates, or do you wait a couple months to get all that done because it can be very complicated?”

Johnson said that he’ll discuss the sequencing of bills with President-Elect Donald Trump and a budget will be done in “early January. That will set the table for the reconciliation process. And the reason that’s so important, of course, for folks back home, remember, the only way around the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, to go with a bare majority, is the reconciliation process, you are reconciling the budget. … We think we can squeeze a lot into that limited process. There probably will be at least two reconciliation packages. So, the determination right now is, where does the tax piece fit in? Do we do that first, out of the gates, or do you wait a couple months to get all that done because it can be very complicated?”

Host Bret Baier then asked, “And in that scenario, immigration, maybe, would go first?”

Johnson responded, “Yes. It’s no surprise that [the] border is at the top of everyone’s priority list because it’s at the top of the list for the American people. We do that, we do energy policy, we ensure that we don’t have the largest tax increase in U.S. history — which is what would happen at the end of next year if we don’t extend those tax cuts — and a lot of other things that we want to do. In the meantime, we’ll be dismantling the deep state. And that’s what the DOGE effort is all about.”

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