(Washington) The Republican President of the American House of Representatives said on Sunday that he expected a text bringing together a large number of key measures from Donald Trump’s program to be put to a vote in Congress at the beginning of April.
Posted at 11:47 a.m.
Updated at 10:13 p.m.
The timetable, “impactful”, according to “speaker” Mike Johnson, means that the text would then land “on the president’s desk before the end of April” for promulgation, he affirmed during an interview with Fox News, “which would be fantastic.”
Donald Trump summarized the content of the bill in the evening: “We must secure the border, unblock American energy and renew the Trump tax credits,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
According to the president-elect, Congress will “work on a single powerful text”, rather than several separate bills as some Republican elected officials would like.
Mike Johnson explained earlier that the bill would include proposals to “secure the border” of the United States with Mexico and deport “dangerous criminals” who have arrived in the United States.
Donald Trump once again focused his presidential campaign in 2024 on immigration and assured, after his victory in November, that he wanted to use the armed forces if necessary to carry out his plan to expel around 13 million migrants in situation irregular.
Mike Johnson also assured Sunday that the text in Congress would include measures to “revitalize the American economy” – in particular with the extension of tax credits decided during Donald Trump’s first term and which are soon to expire.
According to Donald Trump, this will also include his signature tax-free tip measure, which will be “funded entirely by tariffs and much more from countries that have taken advantage of the United States for years.”
Before taking office, the president-elect already promised to increase tariffs against several countries including Canada, Mexico, and China — among the United States’ main trading partners.
On Fox News, Mike Johnson further pledged to include a provision on the debt ceiling.
“The president has asked — and really needs — us to resolve the debt limit crisis before it hits us in June,” he said.
The United States has the particularity of regularly coming up against a legal constraint concerning its credit capacity: the debt ceiling, or its maximum amount of debt, which must be formally raised or suspended by Congress.
A suspension decided in 2023 expired at the beginning of January and the United States should reach the ceiling in June.
During budget negotiations in Congress in December, Donald Trump insisted that an increase, or even a total elimination, of the debt ceiling be included, but was ultimately unsuccessful.
Mike Johnson defended on Fox News the paradox of wanting to increase debt capacity while boasting of wanting to reduce the public deficit.
“We are the ones who want to cut spending, and we are going to do it […]. But you must raise the debt ceiling on paper, so as not to scare the bond markets and the global economy,” he assured.
