Sen. Ron Johnson told Newsmax on Wednesday that he has "no problem" staying in Washington, D.C., until the Senate passes President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful" budget reconciliation bill. But, he cautioned, there's a lot of work to do.
"I appreciate what the House has done," the Wisconsin Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "They have given us some real spending reductions. We're going to avoid a massive automatic tax increase, we're going to avoid default, we're going to provide funding for the border so we can deport individuals.
"It's amazing how President Trump has already secured the border, but we also need to build the wall. So, there's many good things in the House – I'm not really quibbling with the House bill, except for the fact it just doesn't meet the moment in terms of the massive spending increase we had in 2019 to 2020."
Johnson said he met with Trump at the White House earlier this week, and both he and the president are "on the same page" when it comes to the bill.
"We want to get this debt under control," he said. "It's just hard to do. You know, Democrats, it's very easy to spend money to mortgage our children's future. They don't get held accountable by the media. What we're trying to do is very hard. And so, we got a lot of work to do."
He stressed the importance of the Senate taking its time to analyze the budget bill before voting on it, saying, "I just refuse to rush this."
"I don't want to be like [former House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi [D-Calif.], [where] you got to pass this thing to figure out what's in it," Johnson said. "We need to figure out what's in it beforehand, we need to discuss it, we need to debate it. We need to lay out here's the problem, folks. CBO [Congressional Budget Office] says $21 trillion [cumulative deficit] over the next 10 years. The CBO score for the OBBB is $24 trillion [deficit]. That puts it at $2.4 trillion [deficit] per year. Even the White House's scenario on the OBBB is about $18.6 trillion [deficit]. So again, [former President Joe] Biden averaged $1.9 trillion [deficits]. I can't accept that as a new normal."
The Wisconsin senator framed the upper chamber's work on the legislation as a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to reset federal spending "that has gone completely out of control."
"We're all working together in good faith, we all want to do this," Johnson said. "I'm not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good here, but we got to get good a whole lot better."
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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