Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chilling at the U.S. Capitol during a series of votes on Thursday, April 3, 2025. Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty ImagesSen. Ron Johnson spilled the beans on Sunday, claiming he’s got enough GOP buddies on his side to block the House’s “big, beautiful bill” and make some tweaks to it. The dude from Wisconsin is throwing shade on the expansive domestic policy package that barely scraped through the House last week. With House Speaker Mike Johnson warning his Senate peeps not to mess around too much with the bill, fiscal hawks in the Senate are like, “Nah, we ain’t feeling it as it is.”
Sen. Johnson was all like, “We got the numbers to put a pause on this whole thing until the president gets serious about cutting spending and shrinking the deficit,” as he spilled the tea on CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’ The Senate GOP gang, including Sen. Johnson, are majorly concerned that the House bill could send federal deficits skyrocketing, a concern that Speaker Johnson is totally brushing off. The senator emphasized that the top priority of the budget reconciliation process should be deficit reduction, which this bill apparently ain’t doing. He keeps yammering about how the government needs to go back to its pre-pandemic spending levels.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., also got in on the action on Sunday, dissing the spending cuts in the House bill as “weak and puny.” “I mean, the cuts are weak and all, but I’d still back the bill if it wasn’t gonna blow up the debt,” Paul spilled on “Fox News Sunday.” “The math just ain’t adding up, they’re gonna blast the debt through the roof,” he ranted. The Congressional Budget Office, which doesn’t play favorites, ran the numbers and figured that this mega package could pile on $3.8 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. But hey, who’s counting, right?
