GOP firebrands reveal why they aren’t planning on taking away Johnson’s gavel – Washington Examiner

Several GOP firebrands are disgruntled with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) after the House passed its first of two spending bills last week, but they said they are not looking to replace him as their leader.

The lawmakers revealed several reasons they are not seeking to take away Johnson’s speaker gavel, but one reason is that no one else appears to want the leadership role.

“Let’s just go down to Disney and see if Daffy Duck or maybe Goofy would want the job,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) joked to NBC News. “Maybe Mickey! Maybe Mickey would want the job.”

Trouble while in the speaker’s seat could end a congressman’s career, as in the case of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who was removed through a motion to vacate the chair after he passed a controversial spending bill to avoid a government shutdown last year. 

However, lawmakers said they are not looking to file a motion to vacate the chair for Johnson because a lot of the problems Johnson is facing are not of his own making.

“He inherited a lot of this. No, I don’t blame him,” House Freedom Caucus member Ralph Norman (R-SC) said. “It’s like herding cats up here.”

Norman also claimed there were more problems with McCarthy than just passing a spending agreement he did not approve of. 

“He would tell us one thing from the top line, and then he had side deals,” Norman said. “That was not right. Johnson, to his credit, does not do that.”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said that while he believes the speaker represents a “conference that likes to give lip service to fiscal restraint and refuses to act on it,” he does not plan to file a motion to vacate the chair.

“I think it’s a tool that should always be on the table, as an historical matter. I think it should be sparingly used,” Roy said. “I think we need to just keep working forward to try to get somewhere.”

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Roy also said there have not been any major changes in policy since Johnson took the speaker’s gavel, including with the spending bill that passed on Friday. Another spending bill is expected to be passed in the next week or two and must be passed by March 22 to avoid a partial government shutdown.

The second group of spending bills appears to be more difficult to agree with than the first, which includes funding to key offices such as the Pentagon, as well as the health, labor, and education departments.

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