While President Donald Trump has said he would like to see "one big, beautiful" spending bill from Congress, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Newsmax he thinks a better approach would be to finance the president's agenda "in chunks."
"I've been trying to say, let's keep this thing simple," Johnson said Monday on "Wake Up America." "If it were up to me, I'd actually have a three-step approach. I would only provide border funding. I think we need to certainly defend this nation as well, so border defense. Then, I'd really come back, and I'd just extend current tax policy and take a massive automatic tax increase off the table. Then I'd get down, roll up the shirt sleeves and do the really hard work of looking at our entire tax code, which is a mess. Take a look at the proposals President Trump made during the campaign to really focus on the men and women that work in this country — that make this country great, build this country. That is a much more difficult process right there. And again, I appreciate the House trying to tackle it; I just think it's very difficult to do."
Johnson acknowledged that regardless of how many bills Congress ultimately writes, Republicans will be acting alone on their passage because Democrats are focused on fighting tech billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.
"That's why we should do it in chunks," Johnson said. "Keep it simple. Focus on the areas of agreement: We all know we want to secure the border; we all know we want to defend this nation. Get that done. We all know we don't want a massive automatic tax increase. Get that done. And then, as I said, the last part, the major part is going to be difficult. It just is. We have different factions within our party. So recognize that reality. Let's give the president the funds he needs to secure this border — the American public are completely behind that — as well as give Elon Musk and his group more time to get in there and professionally audit these agencies unlike they've ever been audited before."
"Congress can't do it because the administration won't give us the information," he continued. "But the president directing somebody in there to look at these agencies, look at everything we've discovered about USAID. I'm sure almost every government agency is going to have similar types of problems in terms of waste, fraud, and abuse. Let's give them time to root that out. Get the American people on our side to dramatically reduce the level of spending down to prepandemic levels."
Commenting on this week's expected confirmation votes for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, Johnson said the GOP is "pretty confident at this point in time" that both will be confirmed.
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