I think we'll be going shortly.
Yep, here we go.
Elon Musk calls it an abomination.
Democrats hate it, and some
Republican U.S.
Senators are blasting its spending.
The federal reconciliation budget
bill is taking it from all sides,
even as President Donald Trump and
the House speaker praise it as big
and beautiful.
According to the Congressional
Budget Office, the House
reconciliation bill will add
$2.4 trillion to
the federal debt over 10 years.
That's after cutting spending by
1.2 trillion.
And decreasing revenues by 3.6
trillion.
Those numbers add up in a bad way,
according to Wisconsin Republican
U.S. Senator Ron Johnson,
who joins us now from Washington.
And Senator, thanks very much for
being here.
Well, Federico, hope you're doing
well.
I am. So, are you still
a hard no on the reconciliation bill
in its current form, even after
talking to President Trump?
His current form.
But let me point out the good
parts of the bill.
Uh, take away,
uh, eliminate a
massive automatic tax increase
on virtually every American that
pays tax.
It's always default.
The House had done some pretty good
work at looking at programs,
trying to eliminate the waste,
fraud, and abuse of the Obamacare
portion of Medicaid.
That's necessary to do so we can
protect the benefits for the
vulnerable, for disabled children,
pregnant women, the people that
Medicaid was actually designed for,
not single able-bodied working-age
childless adults.
So again, the House has done a lot
of good work. You know, my main
beef is the bait in the house was.
Pretty lacking in terms of looking
at the numbers we really need to be
looking at.
They throw out, you know, 1.5
trillion sounds like a lot,
but over 10 years, it's barely a
rounding air in the $89 trillion was
spent in the two in the 22
trillion dollars additional deficit,
which again, we argue.
I'm not a big fan of the CBO scores.
They're static scoring versus
dynamic, but they'll set the
score aside. Look at the 10 year
projection.
It's pretty grim.
And so my main point is we have
to look at the facts and figures.
Our goal should be to bend
the deficit curve down.
Right now it continues to skyrocket.
But again, the good news is
I think we've got good people in
the positions. I respect the
president. I know he wants to tackle
this problem. The speaker, Lee
Duthun, Chairman Crapel,
the president's got a first class
economic team.
So my next step is sitting
down with Terry Besson again.
And going through the numbers, let's
get our facts straight.
Let's get on the same page from that
standpoint.
Then figure out how we can do
something that's really hard.
You know, one of the points the
president made in the meeting is,
you know, Democrats are always so
unified.
And I pointed out, well, that's
because they're doing the easy
thing.
They're spending money.
They're mortgaging our kids' future.
It's hard to be the parent.
It's easy to be a parent that says,
hey, we're going to go to Disney
World. It's to be hard to the parent
who says, We can't afford that.
I know we all want to go to Disney
World. We just can't afford that
we're kind of that in that position
right now. We're trying to rein in
all this massive deficit spending,
trying to restrain the growth in the
deficits.
Elon Musk calls this a massive,
outrageous, pork-filled, disgusting
abomination.
Is that too strong, then?
Well, the spending is on some
pretty necessary items.
You know, the top priority of
government is defense, so it spends
more on defense, realizing that
we're probably gonna have a hard
time passing appropriation
bills, probably operating on a
continuing resolution for the next
fiscal year, and also recognizes
we have to secure the border.
And we do need to deport criminals
and members of violent gangs and
human sex and
drug traffickers.
So there is some funding we have
to...
Provide.
Otherwise, there are some real
spending reductions here.
Again, not enough to solve our
problem.
And that's all I'm pointing out is
we have to look at that problem, we
have to continue to highlight it.
We have to lead, and we have to lead
about doing something that's really
hard.
If adding $2.4
trillion to the national debt
is irresponsible in your
mind, as I've heard you say,
why not dial back the tax
cuts?
It's not tax cuts.
It's preventing a tax
increase.
And it is true.
The Tax Cut and Jobs Act, when we
enacted that,
federal revenue was 17.1 percent of
our economy.
Right now, federal revenue is 17.
1 percent of the economy.
So we actually lowered rates
and we're still taking in over
10 years now the same percentage
of GDP. And what is interesting
is no matter how much try punishing
success.
Now, I've got a great chart goes
back, I think, more than 50 years
showing top marginal tax rate of
91%, 70%, 50%.
Again, we've spent all over the
place, but over 50 years,
the average...
Revenue we've been able to extract
from the American economy, the
American people, 17.1 percent.
So we're at that average.
At some point in time, we need to
recognize that reality,
recognize that the top 1 percent,
yeah, they earn 20
percent of the income.
They pay more than 40 percent of
tax. At one point, you have to
realize, that's probably a fair
share. We've got progressive rates.
So again, I'm not into raising
people's taxes.
That would harm the economy,
recognizing that economic growth is
the number one component to try
and get ourselves out of this deep
hole that we've done.
Would you be looking for deeper cuts
to social safety net programs?
Is that a place you could find
savings, even looking for cuts in
Medicare?
No, what I've been pointing out is
COVID created a massive
surge in federal government
spending. We were spending $4.4
trillion in 2019.
This year, we'll spend in excess of
$7 trillion.
That's a 58% increase.
No Wisconsin family, if
they had an illness, had to borrow
$50,000, pay medical bills.
If that family member got well,
we'd keep borrowing $50 thousand and
spending that But that's exactly
what Joe Biden, the Democrats,
did following COVID.
They totally irresponsible
totally unsustainable.
So again, I've been just saying,
let's return to a reasonable
pre-pandemic level.
I've laid out options, Clinton in
1998, Obama in 2014,
Trump in 2019.
You exempt Social Security,
Medicare, and interest.
Spend what you need to spend, but
all other outlays, actual outlaves,
increased by population growth
inflation, you end up with a
baseline budget somewhere between
$5.5 and $6.5 trillion.
That's a reasonable approach.
It's a reasonable control.
So what that's basically
looking at spending across
the board line by line That's
what I've been suggesting and pretty
well requiring is we need a process
to control spending go line
by a line Program
by program there's over 2,600
programs in the federal government
My belief is we could eliminate
hundreds of those programs
probably eliminate 10 or
hundreds of billions of spending
that nobody would even notice except
for the grifters who are sucking
down the waste, fraud, and abuse.
Kinds of cuts to this
discretionary spending, because I'm
sure you've looked at this line by
line, or at least started to,
what kinds of discretionary
spending would you have an eye on?
Again, it's across the board.
I would take a look at any spending
program when you plus it
up from 2019 or
2000.
I laid out all the options.
You know, what do we spend on
Clinton?
Totally plus up.
What about Obama?
What about Trump?
I have those three figures in front
of me. Then I say, well, what are we
spending today?
Well, why are we 10 or 15%
above even 2019 levels?
Again, in a business, this would be
easy. I would go to my managers and
say, listen.
I told you guys you could increase
your budgets based on inflation and
the number of customers you serve.
Why are you 10% above that?
Cut it.
I'm not quite sure how you do it.
I don't care.
Don't harm our customers.
Don't cut harm our employees.
But cut your budget.
That would be a five minute
conversation and it would be done.
It ought to be that easy for the
federal government. Unfortunately,
it's not.
What about clawing back money
already appropriated, like in the
rescission package that just went to
Congress that cuts $9.4
billion from USAID
and PBS and NPR, bearing in
mind that we're sitting in a PBS
station right now conducting
this interview.
But I trust you'll vote yes on that
first rescission package?
I completely support what President
Trump and Elon Musk did with Doge.
They exposed just grotesque
examples of waste, fraud and abuse.
Again, we're $37 trillion in debt.
We have deficits projected to
average $2.2 trillion over the next
10 years.
You need to start eliminating
spending.
And so you just can't afford this
anymore. Again, you can't go to
Disney World. We simply can't
affordable it.
And so you would like to see
all the doge cuts codified in
the way of a rescission package?
Again, I can't say every
last one of them, but I would be
generally supportive.
And again, that's pretty much up to
the White House. They have to
prepare
those rescission packages, and
then we get an
up and down vote on it.
As it stands, the House
bill, according to
the Congressional Budget Office,
nearly 11 million people would lose
their Medicaid or Affordable Care
Act coverage under the Would you
want to shed more people?
Well, first of all, that's where you
start really criticizing
the CBO score.
People are pointing out there are a
lot of partisans in that.
So they're going to, you know, ramp
those numbers up, scare people.
Why those people losing maybe
Medicaid coverage, hopefully with
the work requirements, will be
gaining coverage under their
employer.
Again, you have to understand,
Frederica, for every dollar a state
spends on traditional Medicaid for
disabled children, for pregnant
women, the vulnerable, the federal
government kicks in a dollar thirty
three. For every dollar the
state spends on an able-bodied,
working-age, childless adult,
we spend $9.
Distortion has allowed states and
providers to completely abuse the
system. It's caused Medicaid's
cost to skyrocket, putting at risk
Medicaid for the vulnerable.
So again, we've got to fix that.
Again, that's why I opposed
Obamacare. I knew it would screw
things up, and it has.
Now states and
health care providers have pretty
well figured out how to game the
system, Medicaid now reimburses
providers at two or three times the
rate of Medicare, because they've
been able to game the system because
that that disparity between
what the federal government kicks in
for an able-bodied, single,
childless adult.
Again, this is absurd.
The American people don't support
that if they know about it.
What about the Trump
administration's tariffs?
What is your position on those at
this point?
Well, again, I'm pretty much an
unabashed free trader.
I realize that there are products
that we've allowed to be offshore
that are strategic, we've got to
bring them back. I know that China
is a real abuser of world
trading organizations.
President Trump has a negotiating
strategy. I really don't want to
reduce his leverage in that.
I do hope that he concludes it, and
we come to some
steady points so we can return
certainty and stability to our
economy.
All right, Senator Ron Johnson, we
leave it there. Thanks very much for
your time.
Have a great day.
Thank you. Okay, that's a wrap.
Gotta go.
Yeah, thank you. Have a nice
weekend. You too.