New Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, Reveals Surprising Financial Disclosure

Le site d’information The Daily Beast revealed that new Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson claimed no assets in his most recent financial disclosure. Does this mean that this 54-year-old lawyer elected to the House of Representatives in 2016 has no savings account, checking account or retirement account, just like his wife?

“Over the past seven years, Mr. Johnson has never declared a checking or savings account in his name, nor in the name of his wife or any of his children, according to the filings. In fact, he does not appear to have any money hidden in investments, with his latest filing – covering 2022 – showing no assets,” wrote Roger Sollenberger, a politics reporter at the Daily Beast.

“Of course, it’s unlikely that Johnson doesn’t have a bank account. What’s more likely is that Johnson is living paycheck to paycheck — so much so that he doesn’t have enough money in his bank account to trigger account disclosure rules in the bank for members of Congress. »

That said, Johnson, whose annual rep salary was $174,000, has a lot of debt. Every year since 2016, he has reported a mortgage on which he owes hundreds of thousands of dollars and a personal loan of several tens of thousands of dollars. In 2019, he also opened a mortgage line of credit worth tens of thousands of dollars.

One expert told The Daily Beast that Johnson, a father of four, was probably a poor manager of his personal finances. Which does not prevent the new “speaker” from advocating budgetary rigor.

No matter: many Republicans came to Johnson’s defense. “So the Daily Beast wants people to be mad that Speaker Johnson isn’t corrupt and didn’t use his office to enrich himself? This shows how out of touch these people are with reality,” wrote Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, according to this report from Fox News.

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