On October 25, the U.S. House of Representatives elected Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) to be the Speaker of the House. Speaker Johnson’s ascension came after more than three weeks of being without a Speaker, a period triggered by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)’s historic removal from his post earlier this month.
Speaker Johnson was elected after multiple failed attempts within the House Republican conference to choose a viable replacement for Rep. McCarthy, an internal deadlock that prevented the House from legislating for most of October.
Speaker Johnson represents the 4th District of Louisiana and was first elected to the House in 2016. He is currently serving his fourth term. Speaker Johnson previously spent nearly 20 years as an attorney litigating constitutional law cases in district and appellate courts. Before his election to the House, he served in the Louisiana state legislature from 2015- 2017.
In Congress, Speaker Johnson has served on the House Judiciary and Armed Services Committees, among others. He was the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee from 2019-2021.
Speaker Johnson will make this transition during a particularly busy time for the House; progress on several “must-pass” legislative priorities have been forcibly paused since Rep. McCarthy’s ouster earlier this month. Most urgent is the lack of federal government appropriations beyond November 17. The federal government will shut down on November 18, unless Congress acts. Notably for PIA members, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) will also lapse on November 18. In addition, the Farm Bill was supposed to be reauthorized by September 30, but Congress had not yet reauthorized it. Before being elected, Speaker Johnson laid out his plan for legislating in a letter this week to his fellow Republican House members.
PIA will continue to pursue our policy priorities, which include urging Congress to reauthorize the NFIP before November 17 and for as long as possible and seeking needed reforms for crop insurance agents in the forthcoming Farm Bill.