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- House Speaker Mike Johnson is much less wealthy than other members of Congress.
- He doesn't trade any stocks and has a home mortgage valued between $250,000 and $500,000.
- He's made more than $120,000 since 2018 teaching online classes at Liberty University.
The new speaker of the House is not as wealthy as most of his colleagues.
That's perhaps the biggest insight one can draw from eight years of financial disclosures filed by Rep. Mike Johnson since 2016, when he first ran to represent Louisiana's 4th congressional district.
All members of Congress are required to file yearly financial disclosures in which they detail their assets, any debts they hold, any gifts they've received, and any income they've made in addition to their $174,000 salary.
Here's what we know based on the documents Johnson has filed.
He doesn't own or trade any stocks
From 2016 through 2022, Johnson did not disclose owning or trading any individual stocks — or even other securities, such as mutual funds.
That's a stark contrast from former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose husband Paul's frequent and voluminous trades raised eyebrows from reporters and ethics experts.
As Insider's Conflicted Congress investigation found in 2021, lawmakers often encounter a variety of conflicts of interest stemming from their stock holdings, given that they have access to non-public information and can influence national policy. Late disclosures and other violations of the STOCK Act are common, and lawmakers are often met with just a slap on the wrist for doing so.
However, Johnson also does not appear to have commented publicly on the ongoing effort to ban members of Congress from trading stocks, leaving the public unsure where he stands on the issue.
He has a home mortgage worth up to $500,000
Since 2013, Johnson and his wife Kelly have had a home mortgage from Citizens National Bank valued at between $250,000 and $500,000.
That's not all that dissimilar from former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has disclosed a mortgage for his California home valued between $100,000 and $250,000.
While mortgages are relatively common for homeowners nationwide, they aren't as common for members of Congress. In 2020, OpenSecrets reported that most lawmakers at the time were millionaires.
In addition to the mortgage, Johnson has other debts, including a personal loan and a home equity line of credit from Citizens Bank, both of which were valued between $15,000 and $50,000.
He's made $120,000 from Liberty University since 2018
Johnson has spent the last five years teaching online courses at Liberty University, gradually making more money from the gig each year.
He made $10,600 in 2018, $26,200 in 2019 and 2020, and more than $29,000 in 2021 and 2022. Altogether, he's disclosed $122,485 in earnings from the job.
There's little publicly-available information about Johnson's activities at the university, and Insider has reached out to the university for further details. But according to a biography on the website Answers in Genesis, the congressman has taught "Constitution and free enterprise" at the university's Helms School of Government.
He made roughly the same amount before Congress — but he's set to get a $50,000 raise now that he's speaker
Before he came to Congress, Johnson was both a practicing lawyer and a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives — a part-time job in that state.
As a House candidate in 2016, Johnson disclosed making a $128,316 salary from Kitchens Law Firm in addition to his meager $25,000 salary as a state representative. Couple that with another $18,000 he made from his own practice, and he made just over $171,000 — not too far off from his current $174,000.
But now that he's speaker, Johnson is set to get a $50,000 raise: while all rank-and-file House members and senators make $174,000, the speaker of the House makes $223,500.