Exclusive: Speaker Johnson says reconciliation will remain a 'partisan exercise,' won't rely on Democrats

Despite the GOP's historically narrow majority in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Blaze News in an exclusive interview Monday that he is planning to rely solely on Republicans to get reconciliation out the door.

The House is expected to vote on reconciliation tomorrow night, which would establish a budget blueprint for President Donald Trump's America First agenda. Although Johnson's "big, beautiful bill" earned an endorsement from Trump, Republicans can afford to lose only one vote on reconciliation. Even so, Johnson told Blaze News that all his efforts are focused on uniting Republicans behind the budget resolution.

'I'm convinced that, at the end, it's going to work.'

"Reconciliation, unlike everything else that is done in Congress, is always, by definition, a partisan exercise," Johnson told Blaze News. "It's going to reflect all of our red-meat policies, everything we ran on, campaigned on, and everything President Trump ran on. It's the America First agenda."

"We're not going to have any Democrats, which means we are going to have to have every single Republican," Johnson added.

Although Republicans were re-elected with a narrower majority compared to the previous Congress, Trump recruited two members of Congress, shrinking the GOP's margins even further.

Because of the increasingly slim margin, Johnson and the Republican leadership have dedicated nearly a year of negotiations to ensuring that their whole conference can get behind reconciliation.

'It's a lot of work, a lot of heavy work, high stakes, but a great reward when we get it done.'

"We've been working on this, really, since March of last year, when we first got the committee chairs to start talking about what they might be able to do in reconciliation in their areas of jurisdiction," Johnson told Blaze News. "We've had, I mean, almost a year's worth of work. ... All these things are necessary to get everybody to a consensus when you have such a small margin."

Even so, there are some hesitancies within the GOP. On one hand, several moderate Republicans in purple and blue districts say the budget cuts go too far, while fiscal hawks within the GOP say the cuts don't go far enough. But despite the ideologically diverse conference, Johnson is confident that Republicans will eventually get on the same page.

"I'm convinced that, at the end, it's going to work," Johnson told Blaze News. "None of us are going to get everything we want, but we will be able to pass what I think could be one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in many, many years, maybe decades.

"It's a lot of work, a lot of heavy work, high stakes, but a great reward when we get it done," Johnson added.

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