‘Yeah, Right’: Johnson Drags Dems Who Claim They’re Happy To Run Against Big Beautiful Bill

After his key role in getting President Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill passed, House Speaker Mike Johnson outlined his plans for the future, with more reconciliation bills on the way, and offered a succinct, caustic response to Democrats claiming they were happy to run against the bill in 2026.

“What deals were made?” Fox News’ Shannon Bream asked Johnson on Sunday. “There a couple of members who’ve said they were given assurances outside of this bill of other things  that they would get down the line.”

“I don’t make deals,” Johnson replied bluntly. “Never have since I became Speaker, which is why I’m still surviving with the gavel. You have to find out where people’s red lines are and navigate through that, with what we’ve had is the smallest margin in US history at most points along the way, but we got it done.”

“No side deals,” he reiterated. “What the extra time was, we needed that for people to process. Remember, we got the Senate bill on a Tuesday. They modified a lot of what we did in the House. We worked on it for over a year, so we needed a couple of days there or everybody to process what all those changes were and ensure that they knew exactly how that was gonna be implemented by the administration.”

Dean referred to rumored “promises” that had been made outside the bill. Johnson explained, “We’ve been talking about that publicly and privately for a year and a half. We had always planned to do the first big reconciliation bill, which is the big beautiful bill — now it’s done, a huge leap forward for our priorities — but then also we’ve been planning a second reconciliation bill for the fall — it would be attached to the next fiscal year — and then potentially one in the spring. That’s my plan: three reconciliation bills before this Congress is over. I think we can do that, and so you’ll see more of us advancing these common sense principles to deliver that America First agenda for the people. That’s what they elected us to do. This was a huge leap forward.”

“Democrats say they are excited to run on this bill,” Bream said, prompting Johnson to gibe, “Yeah, right.”

Bream then quoted a DCCC memo saying that Republicans would lose the majority in 2026 because of the big, beautiful bill and the more people knew about it, the less popular it became. “They’re also talking about Democrats holding rallies outside of rural hospitals  and nursing homes this summer to tell people they are going to lose their care,” she stated.

“As I said on the House floor the other day, it takes a lot longer to build a lie than to tell the simple truth,” Johnson said. “Our Republicans are going to be out across the country telling the simple truth, and guess what? It will be demonstrated. Everyone will have more take home pay. They’ll have more jobs and opportunity. The economy will be doing better. And we will be able to point to that as the obvious result of what we did.”