The U.S. House needs new leadership after the thunderous crash of its badly bungled, larded-up spending bill, says Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley.

In a scorching rebuke of Speaker Mike Johnson during an exclusive interview with The Heartlander Thursday, Hawley said he thinks House Republicans need to look elsewhere in their vote for speaker in the new Congress next month.

Hawley was particularly indignant that House leadership, while attempting to fund numerous far-flung and narrow-interest projects, had gone out of its way to strip out the reauthorization of a law he’s championed that provides compensation to those Americans still suffering radiation sickness from the nation’s nuclear bomb production and its lingering waste.

“Oh, the speaker has botched this big-time,” he said of Wednesday’s swift collapse of the bulky House continuing resolution needed to fund the government past Friday. “This is his CR – he wrote the thing – and it was a total stink bomb. 

“I mean, it’s horrible. It was a total embarrassment. This is a bill that included pay raises for members of Congress; special carve-outs from Obamacare for members of Congress; giveaways to Big Pharma. But yet, not a single dollar for those Missourians and other Americans who were poisoned by the government’s nuclear radiation. 

“The government still hasn’t cleaned it up in the state of Missouri. The government hasn’t helped at all with the healthcare cost of the people it poisoned. Yet, Mike Johnson didn’t want to give those people anything, but he wanted to get pharma billions and congressmen a raise.  

“Talk about misplaced priorities. He basically just let the lobbyists write the bill. That’s really the story here. It was a terrible bill. I’m glad it’s dead. 

“I really don’t know how this guy can go on as speaker. I mean, it just is beyond me. How can he lead President Trump’s agenda in the House next year when he can’t get this done? This is simple compared to what’s coming. I’m appalled by it.”

Dawn Chapman is a Missouri radiation victim who, with victims from other states, helped broker a House compromise of the Senate’s more generous reauthorization of the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA).

Now, she’s had it with Speaker Johnson.

“AND…@SpeakerJohnson pulled out the RECA Compromise Bill! I just can’t with this guy anymore. It might be time for a discharge petition!” she posted on X.

Hawley vented his own frustration on X, posting, “@SpeakerJohnson personally killed a bipartisan, bicameral expansion + spending cap RECA deal. It was him alone. BUT he’s willing to spend BILLIONS on Ukraine and foreign wars and every pork barrel project known to man.”

Asked if he agrees with Chapman that Johnson has to go, Hawley is more diplomatic – but barely so.

“Well, here’s the deal: He’s going to have an election coming up in just a couple of weeks, I think Jan. 3. So, pretty soon the House gets to decide who’s going to be speaker. And obviously I don’t have any vote in that, and I leave that to them. But I would just say I don’t have any confidence in him.

“I mean, how is he going to enact President Trump’s agenda when he’s clearly 1) not on the same page as President Trump; 2) doesn’t appear to share any of the same priorities; and 3) he can’t manage anything? I mean, it’s an embarrassment, what’s going on. It’s a catastrophe. I think they need new leadership.”

The House RECA reauthorization was 90% cheaper than the version that passed the Senate twice. So, why was it pulled from even a massive spending bill?

“I have no idea,” Hawley says. “I really think actually it’s just a matter of he’s very weak, and I think he outsources most of his work to lobbyists. You know, lobbyists wrote the continuing resolution. That’s why there’s all those giveaways to pharma in there. That’s why there’s all of these special deals for every pork-barrel interest in the country. 

“They’re doing everything from funding recycling centers in the Northeast to giving special new funding to whale research. It’s absurd. All of it is absurd. 

“How did this stuff get in there? Lobbyists wrote the bill. We need somebody who knows what they’re doing. We need somebody who is on the same page as the American people, who know that we need to stop this wasteful spending, we need to stop the fraud and abuse, and we need to get the people’s work done.

“And I just don’t have any confidence right now in the House leadership.”