The Trump administration's agenda will not advance in the U.S. Senate unless the president and Republican leadership severely cut federal spending to a level that existed before the COVID-19 pandemic, Sen. Ron Johnson told Fox's "Sunday Morning Futures."
The Wisconsin Republican, who is a member of both the Senate Finance and Budget committees, said that the House budget resolution is not "going anywhere ... without a commitment to returning to some reasonable pre-pandemic spending level, and a process to actually achieve it."
The senator added "that's going to be the discussion," stressing that "we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to address this. This is our moment."
The House last month approved a budget framework that includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and $2 trillion in spending cuts.
But Johnson reiterated that "there’s not even a process to look at and understand what the government spends in total. All we do is appropriate the discretionary amount, which is about 24% of our budget right now.
The senator said that "no business could survive, and that’s why, you know, we’re literally margining our children’s future, and we’re $36.4 trillion in debt. He emphasized that "we must get serious about returning spending to a pre-pandemic level.”
Johnson praised the efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency to point out the absurd waste of taxpayer's money and suggested that one way President Donald Trump's vision for the future could be accomplished is to “codify” DOGE's savings.