Sen. Ron Johnson: Senate Can Stop the Bill Until Trump 'Gets Serious'

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has said President Donald Trump cannot intimidate him on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's spending levels, vowing to institute even more cuts to spending in the Senate revision to come before July 4.

"I think we have enough to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit," Johnson, no relation to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.

Ron Johnson has been a vocal fiscal hawk speaking out against the House's version of the bill, saying it still spends too much: "The big, beautiful bill; I think that's the Titanic."

"You don't defeat the deep state by funding it," Johnson told CNN host Jake Tapper.

Democrat-infused spending from former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden – and enhanced by COVID-19 stimulus bailouts – have permeated government's waste, fraud, and abuse: a problem Trump can still fix but it just will take more time, he said.

"So we need to be responsible," Johnson told CNN. "The first goal of our budget reconciliation process should be to reduce the deficit. This actually increases it.

"But let me describe the mess: President Obama averaged about $910 billion of deficits per year. President Trump in his first three years averaged about $810. Then COVID hit, over $3 trillion in deficit.

"It should have ended there. We should have immediately returned to a pre-pandemic level spending, but President Biden averaged $1.9 trillion of deficits over his four years. And, according to CBO, those deficits now averaged $2.2 trillion over the next 10 years. We will add $22 trillion.

"And I'm sorry, the House bill would probably add, I have calculated $4 trillion. You're saying you have these independent analysts saying it's $3.3 trillion to $4 trillion. I agree with that. We have to reduce the deficit. And so we need to focus on spending, spending, spending."

And there is no rift with Trump or House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Sen. Johnson contended.

"I have nothing but respect for Speaker Johnson," Johnson said. "I understand and sympathize with the challenge he has. I have nothing but support for what President Trump is trying to do.

"I love the way he's acting boldly and swiftly decisively to fix the enormous messes left by the Biden administration. So, from my standpoint, this is a budget reconciliation process, so we ought to talk about numbers. One of my disappointments with what the House process is, about the only number we ever heard about was $1.5 trillion, which sounds like a lot, but it's only $150 billion per year.

"And this is put in context of the fact that, in 2019, we spent $4.4 trillion. This year, we will spend over $7 trillion; $150 billion on that is basically a rounding error.

"So we need to get serious about this. We need to establish — right, we need to establish goals."

While there is urgency to get Trump's tax cuts and agenda working before the midterms, he said the best work cannot be rushed through, because that merely repeats past mistakes.

"Part of the problem here is, we have rushed this process; we haven't taken the time," he continued. "We have done it the same old way, exempt most programs, take a look at a couple, tweak them a little bit, try and rely on a CBO score, and then have that score completely out of context with anything that really we ought to be talking about, like the $22 trillion of additional deficit over the next 10 years."

Trump and the GOP-held Congress gets only one bite at the apple, so might as well make it count, Johnson concluded.

"This is our only chance to reset that to a reasonable pre-pandemic level of spending," he said. "And, again, I think you can do it. And the spending that we would eliminate, people wouldn't even notice.

"But you have to do the work, which takes time. That's part of the process."

House Speaker Johnson himself admits Sen. Johnson's intentions are sound, but the reality is far less favorable for big, quick turns of the ship.

"Look, I love Ron Johnson: He's a dear friend, and he and I agree on our philosophy; we're limited government conservatives," Speaker Johnson told CNN. "We want to limit the size and scope of the government and make it work more efficiently and effectively.

"My response to him, and we have spoken about this over recent months, is that we're doing the best we can with the vote numbers that we have. In other words, we have got to turn this aircraft carrier. You don't turn an aircraft carrier on a dime. It takes a mile of open ocean to do it. And it took us decades to get in this financial situation. We can't just flip a switch and get out of it overnight.

"I have got to get to 217 votes to get this thing over the line, so as much as we can, in as big an increment as we can. I think we have achieved that here. And I just want them to remember that. We have got to deal within the realm of what's possible."