Election of Speaker

Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Thank you all. First, a few words of gratitude. I want to thank Leader Jeffries. I do look forward to working with you on behalf of the American people. I know we see things from very different points of view, but I know in your heart you love and care about this country and you want to do what is right. We are going to find common ground there.

I want to express my great thanks to our Speaker Emeritus, Kevin McCarthy. Kevin has dedicated over two decades of his life to selfless public service; 16 of those years in this House. You would be hard- pressed to find anybody who loves this institution more or who has contributed more to it. He is the reason we are in this majority today. His impact can never be overstated. I want to thank him for his leadership, his friendship, and the selfless sacrifice that he and Judy have made for so many years. You helped build it, Kevin, and we owe you a great debt of gratitude.

I want to thank the dedicated and overworked staff of this beleaguered House. They accept praise so stoically. Ms. Susan Cole, our House Reading Clerk--yes, all the clerks and all the staff, they are terribly overworked. This has been a grueling process, but they have served an integral role in keeping our Republic. We thank them for that service. I know we all do.

I want to thank my dedicated wife of almost 25 years, Kelly. She is not here. We couldn't get a flight in time. This happened sort of suddenly. We are going to celebrate soon. She spent the last couple of weeks on her knees in prayer to the Lord, and she is a little worn out. We all are.

I want to thank our children: Michael, Hannah, Abby, Jack, and Will. All of our children sacrifice. All of them do, and we know that. There are not a lot of perks to being a Member of Congress' kid. I want to thank all of your families as well for what they endure and what they have had to endure for the last few weeks. We have been here awhile.

I want to thank my faithful mother, Jeanne Johnson, who bore me at the age of 17; my brothers, Chris and Josh; my sister, Laura; all their families and all of our extended family. In Louisiana, family is a big deal, and we have a bunch of them.

I especially want to thank all the extraordinary people of the great State of Louisiana. We have never had a Speaker of the House hail from our State, and they have been lifting us up. I thank the people of Louisiana for the opportunity to serve you in Congress, and I am humbled by your continuous support. We will make you proud.

To my colleagues, I want to thank you all for the trust you have instilled in me to lead us in this historic and unprecedented moment that we are in. The challenge before us is great, but the time for action is now, and I will not let you down.

I want to say to the American people on behalf of all of us here: We hear you. We know the challenges you are facing. We know that there is a lot going on in our country, domestically and abroad, and we are ready to get to work again to solve those problems, and we will.

Our mission here is to serve you well, to restore the people's faith in this House, in this great and essential institution.

My dad, it was mentioned my dad was a firefighter. He was an assistant chief of the fire department in my hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana, a little town in northwest Louisiana.

On September 17, 1984, when I was 12 years old, he was critically burned and permanently disabled in the line of duty. All I ever wanted to be when I grew up was the chief of the fire department in Shreveport. After the explosion on that fateful day, he nearly died and it was a long road back. It changed all of our life trajectories. I am the oldest of four kids.

My dad lived with pain all the rest of his life, for decades more. I lost my dad to cancer 3 days before I got elected to Congress. He wanted to be there at my election night so badly. I am the first college graduate in my family. This was a big deal to him.

Several weeks after that, in early 2017, it was my freshman term, and it fell to me to be in the rostrum one night to serve here as Speaker pro tempore. I thought that was a big deal until I figured out that is what you do for freshmen late at night.

I think, if my memory serves, Ms. Jackson Lee was winding down one of her long, eloquent speeches--not that I was not enraptured by her speech. I looked up at the top of the Chamber there and I saw the face of Moses staring down. I just felt in that moment the weight of this place, the history that is revered here, and the future that we are called to forge, and I really was just kind of almost overwhelmed with emotion.

It occurred to me in that moment that it had been several weeks, and I had not had an opportunity yet to grieve my dad's passing. I just had a sense that somehow he knew. I had tears come to my eyes, and I was standing here, and I am wiping them away, and then it suddenly occurs to me the late-night C-SPAN viewers are going to think something is very wrong with the new, young Congressman from Louisiana. It wasn't Sheila's speech, I am sorry.

I just knew in that moment that my dad, my father, would be proud of me, and I felt that he was. I think all of our parents are proud of what we are called to do here.

I think all the American people at one time had great pride in this institution, but right now, that is in jeopardy. We have a challenge before us right now to rebuild and restore that trust.

This is a beautiful country. It is the beauty of America that allows a firefighter's kid like me to come here and serve in this sacred Chamber, where great men and women have served before all of us and strived together to build and then preserve what Lincoln did refer to as the last, best hope of man on Earth.

We stand at a very dangerous time. I am stating the obvious. We all know that. The world is in turmoil, but a strong America is good for the entire world.

We are the beacon of freedom, and we must preserve this grand experiment in self-governance. It still is. We are only 247 years into this grand experiment. We don't know how long it will last, but we do know the Founders told us to take good care of it.

I want to tell all my colleagues here what I told the Republicans in that room last night: I don't believe there are any coincidences in a matter like this. I believe that Scripture, the Bible, is very clear, that God is the one that raises up those in authority. He raised up each of you, all of us. I believe that God has ordained and allowed each one of us to be brought here for this specific moment and this time. This is my belief.

I believe that each one of us has a huge responsibility today to use the gifts that God has given us to serve the extraordinary people of this great country--and they deserve it--and to ensure that our Republic remains standing as the great beacon of light and hope and freedom in a world that desperately needs it.

It was in 1962 that our national motto, In God We Trust, was adorned above this rostrum. If you look at the little guide that they give tourists and constituents who come and visit the House, if you turn in there to about page 14 in the middle of that guide, it tells you the history of this. It says very simply: These words were placed here above us. This motto was placed here as a rebuke of the Cold War-era philosophy of the Soviet Union. That philosophy was Marxism and Communism, which begins with the premise that there is no God.

This is a critical distinction that is also articulated in our Nation's birth certificate. We know the language well, the famous second paragraph that we used to have children memorize in school, and they don't do that so often anymore, but they should.

G.K. Chesterton was a famous British philosopher and statesman. He said one time: ``America is the only nation in the world founded upon a creed.'' He said it is listed with almost ``theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence.''

What is our creed? ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,'' not born equal, created equal, and they are endowed with the same inalienable rights--life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. That is the creed that has animated our Nation since its founding, that has made us the great Nation that we are.

We are in a time of extraordinary crisis right now. The world needs us to be strong. They need us to remember our creed and our admonition.

Turmoil and violence have rocked the Middle East and Eastern Europe. We all know it. Tensions continue to build in the Indo-Pacific. The country demands strong leadership of this body, and we must not waver.

Our Nation's greatest ally in the Middle East is under attack. The first bill that I am going to bring to this floor in just a little while will be in support of our dear friend Israel, and we are overdue in getting that done.

We are going to show not only Israel but the entire world that the barbarism of Hamas that we have all seen play out on our television screens is wretched and wrong, and we are going to stand for the good in that conflict.

We have a catastrophe at our southern border. The Senate and the White House can no longer ignore the problem. From Texas to New York, wave after wave of illegal migrants are stressing our communities to their breaking points.

We know that our streets are being flooded with fentanyl, and in all of our communities, children and even adults are dying from it.

The status quo is unacceptable. Inaction is unacceptable, and we must come together and address the broken border. We have to do it.

The skyrocketing cost of living is unsustainable, and Americans should not have to worry about how they are going to feed their family every week because they can't afford their groceries anymore. Everybody in this room should think about this.

Here are the stats: Prices have increased over 17 percent in the last 2 years; credit card interest rates are at the highest level in nearly three decades; and mortgage rates are now at a peak we haven't seen since 2001. We have to bring relief to the American people by reining in Federal spending and bringing down inflation.

The greatest threat to our national security is our Nation's debt. While we have been sitting in this room, the debt has crossed to almost $33.6 trillion. In the time that it is going to take me to deliver this speech, it will go up another $20 million in debt. It is unsustainable. We have to get the country back on track.

We know this is not going to be an easy task, and tough decisions will have to be made, but the consequences if we don't act now are unbearable.

We have a duty to the American people to explain this to them so they understand it well. We are going to establish a bipartisan debt commission to begin working on this crisis immediately.

We all know that we also live in a time of bitter partisanship. It was noted, and it has been on display here today. When our people are losing their faith in government, when they are losing sight of the principles that made us the greatest Nation in the history of the world, I think we have to be mindful of that. We are going to fight. We are going to fight vigorously over our core principles because they are at odds a lot of the time now in this modern era. We have to sacrifice sometimes our preferences because that is what is necessary in a legislative body, but we will defend our core principles to the end.

In his farewell address, President Reagan explained the secret of his rapport with people, and I like to paraphrase his explanation all the time. He said: You know, they call me the great communicator, but I really wasn't that. I was just communicating great things, and they are the same great things that have guided our Nation since its founding.

What are those great things? I call them the seven core principles of American conservatism, but let me concede to you all, I think it is really quintessentially the core principles of our Nation. I boil them down to individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, and human dignity. Those are the foundations that made us the extraordinary Nation that we are.

You and I today are the stewards of those principles, the things that have made us the freest, most powerful, most successful Nation in the history of the world, the things that have made us truly exceptional.

In this time of great crisis, it is our duty to work together, as previous generations of great leaders have, to face these great challenges and solve these great problems.

I will conclude with this: The job of the Speaker of the House is to serve the whole body, and I will, but I have made a commitment to my colleagues here that this Speaker's office is going to be known for decentralizing the power here. My office is going to be known for Members being more involved and having more influence in our processes, in all the major decisions that are made here for predictable processes and regular order. We owe that to the people.

I make this commitment to you, to my colleagues here and on the other side of the aisle, as well: My office is going to be known for trust and transparency and accountability, for good stewardship of the people's treasure, for the honesty and integrity that is incumbent upon all of us here in the people's House.

Our system of government is not a perfect system. It has got a lot of challenges, but it is still the best one in the world, and we have an opportunity to preserve it.

The last thing I am going to say is a message to the rest of the world. They have been watching this drama play out for a few weeks. We have learned a lot of lessons, but do you know what? Through adversity, it makes you stronger. We want our allies around the world to know that this body of lawmakers is reporting again to our duty stations. Let the enemies of freedom around the world hear us loud and clear: The people's House is back in business.

We will do our duty here; we will serve the people well; we will govern well; and we will make everyone proud of this institution again. We are going to fight every day to make sure that is true.

I look forward to the days ahead. I genuinely believe in my heart that the best days of America are still ahead of us. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

I am now ready to take the oath of office.

I ask the Dean of the House of Representatives, the Honorable Hal Rogers of Kentucky, to administer the oath of office.

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