ICYMI: House Speaker Mike Johnson's Acceptance Speech

Newly elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson of Shreveport, Louisiana addressed the House for the first time after his election before being sworn in and his speech reflected his love of his family, his faith, and his vision for America.

Here’s a preliminary transcript courtesy of CSPAN (with some cleaning up, but still subject to future editing)

WATCH:

Thank you. Thank you. 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 that in your heart you love and care about this country and you want to do what's right. We are going to find common ground there, all right. I want to express my great thanks for our speaker emeritus, Kevin McCarthy. Kevin has dedicated over two decades of his life to selfless public service, 166 those -- 6 those -- 16 of those years in this house. You would be hard pressed anybody who loves this institution more or contributed more to it. He's the reason we are in this majority today. His impact could never be overstated. I want to thank him for his leadership, his friendship, and the selfless face you and Judy have made for so many years. You helped build t. Kevin, and we owe you a great debt dude. I want to thank the dedicated and overworked staff of this beleaguered house. They accept praise so stoically. Stoically. Mrs. Susan, our house reading clerk. Yes, yes. Listen, all the clerks and all the staff, they are terribly overworked. This has been a grueling process. 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's not here. We couldn't get a flight in time. This happened suddenly. But we are going to celebrate soon. She spent the last couple of weeks on her knees in prayer to the lord. She's a little worn out. We all are. I want to thank our children, Michael and Hannah and Abby and Jack and Will. All of our children sacrifice, all of them do. We know that. And there is not a lot of perks to be in being a member of Congress' kid. So I want to thank all your families as well for what they endure and what they have had to endure for the last few weeks. We have been here a while. I want to thank my faithful mother, Jeanie Johnson, who wore me at the age of 17. My brothers Chris and Josh and my sister Laura and their families and extended family in Louisiana family is a big deal. We have a bunch of them. I especially want to thank alt extraordinary people of the -- all the extraordinary people of the great state of Louisiana.

We have never had a speaker of the house hail from our state. They have been lifting us up. I thank the people of Louisiana for the opportunity to serve you in Congress and I’m humbled by your continuous support. We will make you proud. To my colleagues, I want to thank you 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. We are ready to get to work again to solve those problems. 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 in the fire department of my hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana. Northwest. Louisiana. On September 17, 1984, when I was 12, 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. But after the explosion on that faithful day he nearly "diamond noticed" and it was a long road back and it changed our directory. I'm the old. My dad lived with pain all the rest of his life for decades more. I lost my dad to cancer three days before I got elected to Congress. Three days. And he wanted to he wanted night. Several weeks after that, 2017, 2017, my freshman term, and it fell to me to be in the rostrum one night to serve as speaker pro tempore and I figured out that is what you do as a freshman late at night.

Ms. Jackson Lee was winding down one of her long eloquent speeches and not that I wasn't enraptured by her speech and I looked at the top of the chamber and saw the face of Moses staring down and I felt the weight of this place, the history that is revered here and the future we are called to forged and I was overwhelmed with emotion. It had been several weeks I had not an opportunity to grieve my dad's passing and I had this sense that somehow he knew and I had tears in my eyes and standing here and wiping them away and suddenly occurs late night c-span viewers are going to think there is something wrong with the new congressman from Louisiana. It wasn't your speech. I knew in that moment, my dad, my father would be proud of me and I felt that he was. And I thank all of our parents are proud what we are called to do here.

All the American people at one time had great pride in this institution. But right now, that's in jeopardy and we have a challenge to rebuild and restore this trust. It is a beautiful country and beauty of America that allows a firefighter kid like me to serve in this chamber where great men and women served and strived together and preserve what Lincoln did refer to as the last best hope. We are in a dangerous time, the world is in turmoil, but a strong America is good for the entire world. We are the beacon of freedom and we must he preserve it. We are only 247 years in this grand experiment and the founders told us to take good care of it. I want to tell all my colleagues what I told the republicans in that room last night, I don't believe there are any coincidences I believe that scripture and the bible is very clear that God is the one that raised up each of you and god has allowed us to be brought here to this specific moment and time.

I believe each one of us has a huge responsibility today to use the gifts that God has given us to strive the extraordinary gifts of this great country and this is the great beacon of light, hope, and freedom in a world that desperately needs it. It was in 1962 and our national motto ‘in God we trust’ was adorned about us. If you look at the little guide they give tourists and constituents who come and visit the house, if you turn in there page 14, it tells the history. These words replaced above us. This motto was placed here as rebuke of the cold era war philosophy of the Soviet Union.

That was Marxism and communism which begins with the premise there is no god. This is a critical distinction that is articulated. We know the language well, in the famous second paragraph, that we used to have children memorise in school and don't do it too often. G.K. Chesterson said America is the only nation in the world that is founded upon a creed and listed with theological lucidity. All men are created equal, not born equal, created equal and endowed by the same enablable rights, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. That is the creed that has and mated our nation and made us the great nation that we are and we are in a time of extraordinary crisis and the world needs us to be strong and remember our creed.

Turmoil and violence have rocked Middle East and Europe, we all know it and 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. First bill that I’m going to bring to this floor in a little while will be in support of our dear friend Israel and we are overdue -- 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, Texas to New York, wave after wave of illegal migrants are stressing our communities to their breaking points, streets are being flooded with fentanyl in all of our communities. Children and adults are dying from it. The status quo is unacceptable. Inaction is unacceptable and must come together to address the broken border. We have to do it.

The skyrocketing cost of living is unsustainable and Americans shouldn't worry about how to feed their family every week because they can't afford groceries. Everyone in this room -- here's the stats, prices increased by 17% last two years. Credit card rates are at the highest level in nearly three decades and mortgage rates are at a peak we haven't seen since 2001. We have to bring to the American people by reigning in federal spending and bringing down inflation. But the greatest threat to our national security is our nation's debt and while we have been sitting in this room -- that's right -- the debt has crossed almost $33.6 trillion and time to take me to deliver this speech, we will go up $20 million in debt. Unsustainable. We have to get the country back on track. This won't be an easy task and tough decisions have to be made but the consequences if we don’t act now are unbearable.

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

We all know that we also live in a time of bitter partisanship. It was noted and on display here today. When our people are losing faith in government. When they are losing sight of the principles that made us the greatest nation in the history of the world, we have to be mindful of that. We are going to fight vigorously over our core principles because they are at odds in this modern era. We have to sacrifice our preferences because that is what is necessary but we will defend our core principles to the end. Thank you.

And in his farewell address, President Reagan explained the rapport with people and I would like to paraphrase his explanation all the time and  he said they call me the great communicator and he said I wasn't that. I was communicating the great things that founded our nation. What are those, I call them the seven core principles of conservatism of the nation. And I have wrote down, individual freedom, rule of government, rule of law, peace through strength, free markets, fiscal responsibility and human dignity. Those are the foundations that made the extraordinary nation that we are. And you and I are the stewards of those principles. The things that have made us the freest, most powerful 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 leaders have to solve these 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 made a commitment to my colleagues here that this speaker's office is 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 and in all the major decisions made here for regular order. We owe that to the people. That's right.

And I want to make this commitment to you to my colleagues here and the other side, my office is known for trust, transparency and accountability, for good stewardship of the people's treasure, 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 a lot of challenges but still the best one in the world and we have the opportunity to preserve it. Last thing I’m going to say is a message to the rest of the world, they have been watching this drama play out for a few weeks and learned a lot of lessons. Through adversity, it makes you stronger. Yeah. And we want our allies around the world to know this body of lawmakers is reporting again to our duty stations. Let the enemies of freedom around the world here us loud and clear, the people's house is back in business.

Thank you. Thank you.

We will do our duty here. We will serve you well. We will govern well and make you proud in this institution again. We are going to fight every day to make sure that is true. I look forward to the days ahead. I believe that the best days of America are still ahead of us. God bless you an god bless the united states of America. Thank you.