Speaker Johnson: ‘Intention’ is to increase debt limit in massive Trump agenda bill

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said that congressional Republicans plan to increase the nation’s borrowing limit as a part of a massive party-line bill that they are crafting that will encapsulate President-elect Trump’s legislative agenda.

The plan would address Trump’s concern about Democrats using the debt limit as a leverage point during his administration, as Republicans did with President Biden in 2023. The massive bill of Trump priorities that Republicans are planning will go through a special process called “reconciliation” that bypasses the need to get 60 votes in the Senate for passage.

“The intention is to handle the debt limit in reconciliation in the process, and that way, as the Republican Party, the party in charge of both chambers, we get to determine the details of that,” Johnson said in a press conference on Tuesday.

“If it runs through regular order or regular process and as a standalone, or as part of the appropriations, for example, then you have to have both parties negotiating, and we feel like we're in better a stead do it ourselves,” Johnson added.

The plan is in line with an internal handshake agreement that Republicans made in December as a way to address Trump’s demand to raise the debt ceiling.

Trump made a last-minute demand for a debt limit increase as a part of a short-term government funding bill in December, but many Republicans balked at raising the debt limit without significant spending cuts, and 38 of them voted against a Trump-endorsed bill with a debt ceiling increase.

Johnson acknowledged the range of opinion on the debt limit within the House GOP.

“There is a broad range of opinion on that in our own conference. We are working through that,” Johnson said.

In an internal handshake compromise, Republicans struck an agreement to raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion in exchange for $2.5 trillion in net cuts to spending, as part of the reconciliation package.

The internal agreement originally said the cuts would target mandatory spending, which encompasses entitlement programs, but one Republican said that the agreement was changed to target cuts from anywhere.

While the reconciliation process can be used to address most mandatory spending programs, the Budget Act prohibits using it to change Social Security.

Asked about potential cuts to entitlements, Johnson reiterated Trump’s promise to not cut Social Security benefits.

“President has made very clear, Social Security and Medicare have to be preserved,” Johnson said. “No one is coming in with the intention of cutting benefits in any way or anything. But we have to look at all spending and look at it very literally, while maintaining those commitments. The Republican Party is not going to cut benefits.”

“We do know, however, at the same time, there are many, many areas of fraud, waste and abuse. The government is too large. The agencies are too many. They have too many divisions and employees and all the rest. And there will be a very deliberate auditing of all of that in various aspects as we go through the process,” Johnson said.