, a Republican from Wisconsin, says President Trump鈥檚 鈥渂ig, beautiful鈥� doesn鈥檛 do enough to reduce the deficit.
In an interview with Here & Now鈥檚 Peter O鈥橠owd, Johnson criticized the bill for not bringing government spending back to pre-pandemic levels and didn鈥檛 answer whether he would commit to voting for it if Trump asked him to compromise.
鈥淚 will talk to him,鈥� Johnson said.
3 questions with Ron Johnson
Have you changed your mind on the bill?
鈥淣o, as a matter of fact, the more people I talked to that I enlighten with the actual facts and numbers. When they see that, and I think they agree that the primary goal of this Republican budget resolution ought to be to reduce the deficit. Now, we鈥檙e worth $37 trillion in debt. [Congressional Budget Office] projects we鈥檒l add $22 trillion to that over the next 10 years, bumping up to about $59 trillion. As I do the math, we鈥檙e probably going to be increasing the deficit, pushing it up to $60 [trillion], $61 [trillion], $62 trillion when we should be trying to control it. And so that ought to be the first goal, but you know, and we鈥檙e not accomplishing that. I know people, it sounds like $1.5 trillion is a lot of money, but that鈥檚 about 1.3% of the $89.3 trillion we鈥檒l spend over the next 10 years. So it鈥檚 just, it鈥檚 falling short of the mark.鈥�
What do you want to cut?
鈥�So I refer to it as returning to a reasonable pre-pandemic baseline of spending, and I鈥檝e laid out a number of options. Go back to [former President Bill] Clinton, [former President Barack] Obama, or Trump, to their actual allies in 1998, 2014, 2019. Leave Social Security, Medicare, and interest alone. You can actually exempt Medicaid and still get down to by taking those outlays, increasing by population inflation, a very reasonable control. You鈥檇 have to for the baseline budget of somewhere between $5.5 and $6.5 trillion. This year we鈥檒l spend over $7 [trillion] next year, you know, over $7 [trillion] again.鈥�
Do you support work requirements for Medicaid?
鈥淲ell, let鈥檚 describe what we鈥檙e talking about now. We鈥檙e primarily talking about Medicaid expansion, which is Obamacare, which pays providers $.90 on the dollar versus $.60 on the dollar for disabled children. And so it鈥檚 that Medicaid expansion for single, able-bodied, working-age adults, childless that is crowding out spending for disabled children. So we need to fix that. It鈥檚 also leading to literally the states stealing from the federal government.鈥�
This interview was edited for clarity.
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produced and edited this interview for broadcast with . Scotto also adapted it for the web.
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