Former U.S. Rep. Bill Flores discusses new House Speaker, ERCOT’s winter preparation
BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – Representative Mike Johnson will be the next U.S. Speaker of the House. Wednesday afternoon, he received 220 votes to secure the position.
“The challenge before us is great, but the time for action is now,” Johnson said to his fellow lawmakers. “I will not let you down.”
It’s been a tough few weeks for Republicans who struggled to get on the same page.
Former U.S. Representative Bill Flores joined News 3 at 6 to discuss the new speaker.
“They decided to back Mike because he’s a visionary leader, he’s thoughtful, he’s able to build coalitions, he’s humble and he’s articulate. He has all those great qualities to be a leader because he realizes he is the speaker of the whole house, not just the Republican conference,” Flores said.
Now that a new speaker has been elected, Flores says it’s back to business.
“They immediately started scheduling votes one after the other so it’s back to business,” he said. “They have a lot of catching up to do over the last few weeks of activities that were delayed, but Johnson runs a tight ship and I feel really good about their ability to catch up and do the right things for the American people.”
Flores also serves as the vice chair of ERCOT. Earlier this month, ERCOT said it was going to increase operating reserves to get ready for the winter peak season.
“Texas is a fast-growing state so that brings the good news of economic growth but also brings the challenges of trying to find power,” Flores said.
“When ERCOT ran its models for the winter it found a few cases where it was going to be short on power, and it couldn’t count on intermittent power, so basically what it’s saying is they want to go out and buy another three gigawatts of dispatchable power that’s always there whenever ERCOT calls on it to be available.”
