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Johnson’s recent launch from obscure congressional backbencher to one of the most powerful people in the country has come with a wave of scrutiny. Reporters are combing through his past and finding weird stuff — his curious arrangement with his son to monitor each others’ digital devices for porn, for instance.
One less salacious but perhaps more consequential discovery involves his finances. In his most recent annual financial disclosures, released last year, Johnson (R-La.) reports no assets at all.
Zero.
Follow this authorCatherine Rampell's opinionsFollow
There are no retirement accounts, no money-market funds, no stocks, no crypto, not even a basic checking or savings account. Even more peculiar, his disclosures have never listed any checking or savings accounts on any of the forms he has filed going back to 2016, the year he was elected to Congress.
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This is confusing. Where is his congressional salary being deposited? How is he paying his bills?
Johnson was asked on Sunday about his lack of a bank account during an interview on Fox News. “I’m a man of modest means,” he replied, deflecting.
He said he had previously worked at nonprofits. He noted that he also has either four or five children (which is a whole other story). “We have a lot of expenses,” he said, citing multiple tuition bills for those kids. He then pivoted to talking about his upbringing as the son of a firefighter and declared that these humble financial circumstances help him “relate to every hard-working American family.” The Fox News anchor asked no follow-up questions.
This bizarre exchange raised more questions than it answered. Such as, how is he paying those school tuition fees? With cash he keeps under his mattress? Sacks of doubloons?
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There was speculation, including via late-night TV jokes, that Johnson might be completely “unbanked.” This seemed improbable. The unbanked are disproportionately very low-income — people who can’t make minimum balance requirements or afford bank fees. Rank-and-file federal representatives, by contrast, draw a sizable congressional salary of $174,000 (which gets bumped up to $223,500 for the speaker).
That’s not Johnson’s only income, either, as he earns another $30,000 annually for teaching at Liberty University. His wife receives multiple salaries, too; the exact amounts of her salaries were not disclosed in Johnson’s most recent financial reports, but based on prior years’ data, the household is likely pulling in at least $211,000 total. That’s close to the 90th percentile. And note that other members of Congress of “modest” backgrounds still somehow report having bank accounts.
Or maybe he had bank balances so low that they’re below the required reporting threshold — which is $1,000 for any given account, so long as the combined value of all bank accounts (including those of spouses and dependent children) is over $5,000.
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This would suggest that the speaker was living hand to mouth. That is, whatever money comes in might be going right out the door.
Those reporting thresholds matter only for a brief snapshot in time: the account’s balance at the end of the calendar year. So, if a savings account exists and was flush on Dec. 1 but got cleaned out by Dec. 31, he doesn’t have to disclose it in these annual filings, explains Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group.
Libowitz noted another detail supporting this hypothesis: When Johnson first came into office, he had a retirement account. That account has since disappeared, while he has taken out another loan.
“The retirement fund was slowly going up and is now gone, which kind of points to having money problems,” Libowitz says.
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Johnson’s office did not respond to questions I sent about his financial disclosures by publication time. Then, early Tuesday morning, Politico reported that his office told its own reporter that Johnson does indeed have a bank account. His account does not pay interest, though, which makes it exempt from House disclosure rules.
Holding your family’s entire savings in a non-interest-bearing account is a strange choice for a high-income household, particularly during a period of high inflation. But more important, this arrangement still leaves voters in the dark about Johnson’s financial well-being. Whatever Johnson’s motivation for managing his money this way, the effect is to obscure what his resources actually look like and whether he’s under the kind of financial strain that other parts of his disclosures might suggest.
People of all levels of income have money troubles, of course, and it’s usually no one’s business. But those who hold the public trust are different. Whether it’s the leader of the free world or the leader of the people’s house, the public has a right to know whether their elected officials are facing serious financial difficulties — particularly ones that might make them targets for unsavory characters and influence-buying or that might tempt them to misuse campaign funds. This is not exactly unprecedented.
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This is why we have financial disclosures in the first place: so Americans can judge whether public servants are truly serving the public interest or their own. Yes, a loophole allows Johnson to keep secret the value of his financial assets. If Johnson wants to prove he’s worthy of his unexpected promotion, though, he should release more information about what’s really happening with his finances.
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This column has been updated.
A teeny fraction of American households don’t have a bank account. In recent days, it appeared that one such household might belong to the man second in line for the presidency: House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Johnson’s recent launch from obscure congressional backbencher to one of the most powerful people in the country has come with a wave of scrutiny. Reporters are combing through his past and finding weird stuff — his curious arrangement with his son to monitor each others’ digital devices for porn, for instance.
One less salacious but perhaps more consequential discovery involves his finances. In his most recent annual financial disclosures, released last year, Johnson (R-La.) reports no assets at all.
Zero.
There are no retirement accounts, no money-market funds, no stocks, no crypto, not even a basic checking or savings account. Even more peculiar, his disclosures have never listed any checking or savings accounts on any of the forms he has filed going back to 2016, the year he was elected to Congress.
This is confusing. Where is his congressional salary being deposited? How is he paying his bills?
Johnson was asked on Sunday about his lack of a bank account during an interview on Fox News. “I’m a man of modest means,” he replied, deflecting.
He said he had previously worked at nonprofits. He noted that he also has either four or five children (which is a whole other story). “We have a lot of expenses,” he said, citing multiple tuition bills for those kids. He then pivoted to talking about his upbringing as the son of a firefighter and declared that these humble financial circumstances help him “relate to every hard-working American family.” The Fox News anchor asked no follow-up questions.
This bizarre exchange raised more questions than it answered. Such as, how is he paying those school tuition fees? With cash he keeps under his mattress? Sacks of doubloons?
There was speculation, including via late-night TV jokes, that Johnson might be completely “unbanked.” This seemed improbable. The unbanked are disproportionately very low-income — people who can’t make minimum balance requirements or afford bank fees. Rank-and-file federal representatives, by contrast, draw a sizable congressional salary of $174,000 (which gets bumped up to $223,500 for the speaker).
That’s not Johnson’s only income, either, as he earns another $30,000 annually for teaching at Liberty University. His wife receives multiple salaries, too; the exact amounts of her salaries were not disclosed in Johnson’s most recent financial reports, but based on prior years’ data, the household is likely pulling in at least $211,000 total. That’s close to the 90th percentile. And note that other members of Congress of “modest” backgrounds still somehow report having bank accounts.
Or maybe he had bank balances so low that they’re below the required reporting threshold — which is $1,000 for any given account, so long as the combined value of all bank accounts (including those of spouses and dependent children) is over $5,000.
This would suggest that the speaker was living hand to mouth. That is, whatever money comes in might be going right out the door.
Those reporting thresholds matter only for a brief snapshot in time: the account’s balance at the end of the calendar year. So, if a savings account exists and was flush on Dec. 1 but got cleaned out by Dec. 31, he doesn’t have to disclose it in these annual filings, explains Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group.
Libowitz noted another detail supporting this hypothesis: When Johnson first came into office, he had a retirement account. That account has since disappeared, while he has taken out another loan.
“The retirement fund was slowly going up and is now gone, which kind of points to having money problems,” Libowitz says.
Johnson’s office did not respond to questions I sent about his financial disclosures by publication time. Then, early Tuesday morning, Politico reported that his office told its own reporter that Johnson does indeed have a bank account. His account does not pay interest, though, which makes it exempt from House disclosure rules.
Holding your family’s entire savings in a non-interest-bearing account is a strange choice for a high-income household, particularly during a period of high inflation. But more important, this arrangement still leaves voters in the dark about Johnson’s financial well-being. Whatever Johnson’s motivation for managing his money this way, the effect is to obscure what his resources actually look like and whether he’s under the kind of financial strain that other parts of his disclosures might suggest.
People of all levels of income have money troubles, of course, and it’s usually no one’s business. But those who hold the public trust are different. Whether it’s the leader of the free world or the leader of the people’s house, the public has a right to know whether their elected officials are facing serious financial difficulties — particularly ones that might make them targets for unsavory characters and influence-buying or that might tempt them to misuse campaign funds. This is not exactly unprecedented.
This is why we have financial disclosures in the first place: so Americans can judge whether public servants are truly serving the public interest or their own. Yes, a loophole allows Johnson to keep secret the value of his financial assets. If Johnson wants to prove he’s worthy of his unexpected promotion, though, he should release more information about what’s really happening with his finances.
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