The House Speaker Who Transformed Mississippi

Mississippi House Speaker Jason White says the Magnolia State had its own "One Big Beautiful Bill" before such a thing existed at the federal level.

Earlier this year, White successfully shepherded the "Build Up Mississippi Act" through the state house.

The bill included four parts: phasing out the state's personal income tax, cutting the grocery tax from 7 percent to 5 percent, adjusting the fuel tax, and reforming the public employee retirement system.

"Any of the four parts would have been huge," he told National Review. "Any one of them would have been major legislation for a four-year term, and we got all four of them in one year and one bill."

Under the bill, the personal income tax will drop to 3 percent by 2030, with future annual cuts dependent upon state spending and revenue. The legislation marks a change from the state's previous flat income tax that was already scheduled to drop to 4 percent in 2026, down from the 5 percent rate that existed pre-2023.

Additionally, before the bill, the state had one of the highest grocery taxes in the nation and the state retirement system was a "huge 900-pound gorilla," White said. Elected officials in the late ’90s and early 2000s increased retirement benefits for public employees as a way to win votes, but didn't allow for any adjustments on the intake side to pay for the benefits, leading to a $26 billion deficit.

"We had to take some steps to modify that program, find some dedicated revenue, and adjust it going forward in a way that was most conservative and common sense," he said.

The retirement system reform honors the promises made to people that are already retired or working; the changes will be implemented going forward for new employees who begin work in March 2026 or later. For those individuals, there will be a hybrid plan that is part defined benefit and part defined contribution, similar to retirement systems seen in the private sector.

"You can imagine that with tens of thousands of engaged public employees that are retired, none of my members wanted to touch that, what some of my people call the third rail of Mississippi politics," he said.

Addressing the state's excise tax, which had not been altered since 1987, was equally controversial.

"I tell folks you haven't lived until you've walked into a room of 79 Republican caucus members and tell them, 'Ladies and gentlemen, we've got to figure out a way to raise this gas tax,'" he said. "So that wasn't fun, that wasn't popular for a few days, but coupled with a $2.5 billion income tax cut, I could justify that to the point of it's still a $1.9 billion tax cut to Mississippians."

Under the new legislation, the excise tax on gasoline and special fuels will increase gradually from $0.21 to $0.27 per gallon by 2027.

"We are extremely proud of that piece of legislation and how much support it has not only here in our state locally, but nationally. Most states are saying, 'How are y'all doing this? We want to come down there and look at your models."

'No Playbook'

White had come into the speakership in 2024 ready to work. He had already gotten an up close and personal view of the inner workings of the speaker's office during four years spent as speaker pro tempore.

"But you still get in this office and there is no playbook," he said. "You've got to figure it out. And we have 122 members. So, it's a lot of moving parts."

White was first elected to the state house in 2011, representing District 48, which covers portions of Attala, Carroll, Holmes, and Leake counties. Four years before he became speaker pro tempore, he was named rules chairman and elected Republican floor leader.

Before his election to the state house, he served as a lawyer in his hometown of Kosciusko, Miss. And in addition to his responsibilities as house speaker, White also serves as a deacon and Sunday school teacher at his church.

But despite the many "moving parts," White moved quickly to lead the state in doing something that had been tried unsuccessfully for the last decade in conservative circles: a rewrite of the state's K–12 public school funding formula to make it "more transparent" and "equitable."

It was past time to do away with the "old archaic funding model that just always called for more money, never accountability" and was "never tied to a specific student," he said.

That battle went right down to the end of the first legislative session after the state senate killed the legislation three times.

But the final version of the bill represents a "game changer" for the way the state funds its public school system. Under the new formula, funding is tied to each individual student — a piece that will help White as he now gears up to push universal school choice through the state legislature.

The school funding formula fight gave White "a map for how to move major legislation and how to maneuver in that environment when you're going into a system where folks get really upset when you start moving pieces around on the board," he said.

Mississippi, he says, has some "real momentum."

In addition to Republicans' recent legislative achievements, he pointed to record capital investment in the state over the last several years, including the planned opening of an Amazon Web Services data center in Central Mississippi. "We didn't have to sell the farm to do it. They didn't ask for a lot from the state in the form of incentives. What they liked were low regulation of low taxes and the state staying out of their business."

GOP State Representative Sam Creekmore IV met White in January 2020, when Creekmore was first getting started in the state house representing his Union County district and White had just been elected speaker pro tem.

"That session was tumultuous," Creekmore told National Review, as lawmakers "faced one of the most consequential votes in Mississippi's modern history: changing the state flag."

Creekmore said it was "long past time" to adopt a new flag, something that then-House Speaker Philip Gunn had pushed for for years, with White "right beside him."

"I vividly remember Jason's passionate and influential remarks on the House floor urging us to move Mississippi forward for all its people. It was a defining moment," Creekmore said.

He recounted four years later, when White was elected speaker and gave a speech that "set the tone for his leadership." In his speech, White challenged the lawmakers to pursue bold ideas.

"He told us that if our dreams for Mississippi don't make us uncomfortable, then we're dreaming too small," Creekmore recalled.

"As chairman of public health, I have tried to follow that lead," he added. "Under Speaker White's leadership, we have chased meaningful reforms in mental health, moving Mississippi's system from among the worst in the country to 28th overall."

GOP State Representative Lee Yancey, the chairman of the Business and Commerce Committee told NR that White has "helped change the direction of Mississippi."

White's Next Battle: School Choice

White is now gearing up for his next battle when the new legislative session starts on January 6: bringing universal school choice to Mississippi.

White acknowledged he's facing headwinds in the Senate but said the House is "going to fight hard to give our people in Mississippi some real choice and freedom when it comes to making education decisions about their kids."

The legislation White is looking to pass would create education savings accounts (ESAs) of somewhere between $6,500 and $7,500 per student. For homeschoolers, that amount would likely be capped at $2,000 per family.

If passed, the bill would help improve the educational climate in a state that's experienced an astonishing turnaround in recent years, going from 49th in the country for fourth grade reading in 2013 to ninth nationally by 2024, with the most pronounced benefits accruing to the most disadvantaged kids.

White is pitching a plan that would be phased in over a three- to five-year period and would include "common sense" provisions about which families will be among the first eligible for the program. Spots will be reserved specifically for families making at or below the poverty levels established in the One Big Beautiful Bill.

The speaker also wants students to be able to transfer to any other public school and not be bound by the home district where they live, as long as they can find another public school that will accept them. Funding would follow that child to another public school.

White has been traveling around the state touting school choice and says he's received a good reception from parents.

But, White said, school choice opponents "are extremely loud and though they’re using the same old arguments, they’re good at articulating them."

His office has been running "education freedom pop quiz" posts on social media, posting a true or false question to debunk some of the anti-school choice arguments. It's a way to "reach people and kind of let them know, 'Hey, the sky's not falling just because we're implementing school choice. As a matter of fact, everybody's going to be better off, including public education":

Public funds have supported private education for decades through Pell Grants, state financial aid to private colleges, and even the limited school choice programs Mississippi has today. Almost $11 million in state tax dollars per year are used at private institutions for special… pic.twitter.com/6dCwINjeW7

— Jason White (@JasonWhiteMS) October 29, 2025

For public schools that are in great shape, White tells people they have nothing to worry about. "You have a great school, you're going to keep being a great school. But if you want to prop up bad schools and not do school choice or allow our parents to make some decisions, that argument just won't fly."

A statewide poll conducted by the Tarrance Group last month on behalf of "yes. every kid. foundation" found widespread support for school choice. Eighty-five percent of respondents said parents, not the government, should choose their child's school, while 75 percent said education savings accounts should be available to all families not limited by household incomes or district ratings. Seventy-nine percent said they would be more likely to vote for legislators who support making the ESA program statewide and universal.

"Now, we still have to get that bill across the finish line and get it to the Senate, but the Senate's going to have a hard time pushing back," White predicted.