WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson said that he jokingly asked Elon Musk if he wanted to take over his job — after the billionaire helped torpedo a major government spending bill on Thursday, resulting in a pared-down version that passed Friday night after two days of intense wrangling.
“Elon Musk and I talked within about an hour ago and we talked about the extraordinary challenges of this job,” Johnson (R-La.) told reporters after the House overwhelmingly passed the final package.
“And I said, ‘Hey, you want to be speaker of the House? I don’t know.’ He said this may be the hardest job in the world. I think it is.”
Musk, the incoming chief of President-elect Donald Trump’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, took on a leading role in tanking an earlier 1,547-page bill, with Johnson then whittling it down to 118 pages with Trump too joining in criticizing the initial version.
House Democrats took to calling the SpaceX and Tesla CEO “President Musk” during debate on the bill.
Musk praised Johnson on Friday evening, tweeting: “The Speaker did a good job here, given the circumstances. It went from a bill that weighed pounds to a bill that weighed ounces. Ball should now be in the Dem court.”
The role of House speaker doesn’t require that person to be a member of the House, though all occupants to date have been, meaning that Musk technically could assume the job if members were to select him.
Johnson’s own fate is in doubt due to Republicans’ extremely narrow majority next year and anger from fiscal hawks over even the pared-down spending bill.
Johnson said that he was in close touch with Trump during the final stages of debate on the bill, which still must be passed by the Senate and signed by retiring President Biden to avoid a partial government shutdown at midnight.
“I was in constant contact with President Trump throughout this process,” Johnson said. “I spoke with him most recently about 45 minutes ago. He knew exactly what we were doing and why and this is a good outcome for the country. I think he certainly is happy about this outcome as well.”
The House speaker argued that Republicans would be more free to shake up federal spending come January when they will control both chambers of Congress and the White House.
“Things are going to be very different around here. This was a necessary step to bridge the gap, to put us into that moment where we can put our fingerprints on the final decisions on spending for 2025,” Johnson said.
