(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s senior U.S. Senator says his problems with the reconciliation plan have not changed in the few days since Hosue Republicans in the House put their stamp on it.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson was on CNN recently, explaining he continues to want to see a lot more spending cut out of President Donald Trump’s big beautiful bill.
“We need to be responsible. The first goal of our budget reconciliation process should be to reduce the deficit. This actually increases it,” Johnson said.
Johnson didn’t have a specific price tag for how much he’d like to see cut. Instead, he once again said that the federal government needs to go back to pre-pandemic spending levels.
“President Obama averaged about $910 billion of deficits per-year. President Trump, in first three years, averaged about $810 billion. Then COVID hit, and [we saw] over $3 trillion in deficit. It should have ended there,” Johnson said. “But President Biden averages $1.9 trillion in deficits over his four years.”
Johnson said those Biden deficits have now grown to $2.2 trillion, which means $22 trillion more on the national debt over the next 10 years.
Johnson is one of the loudest critics of the reconciliation package. And he has not backed down, even though Trump and other top Republicans said all Republicans need to get on-board with the plan.
Johnson said he’s been a deficit hawk since his first days in Washington, D.C., and said he’s not changing that now.
“In 2010, I sprang on the Tea Party movement and as I did parades, I would shout ‘This is a fight for freedom. We are mortgaging our children’s future. It is wrong, it’s immoral, and it has to stop,’” Johnson said. “I haven’t changed. My campaign promise in 2010, and in every campaign after that, was to stop mortgaging our children’s future.”
Johnson said this is the best chance Republicans have had in decades to reduce the size of the deficit, and he doesn’t want it to slip away.
Despite Johnson’s critiques of the reconciliation package, he has not said whether he will ultimately be a ‘no’ vote for the plan when it comes up for a vote in the Senate.
