Sen. Ron Johnson says House Megabill ‘Has no chance of passing’ : NPR

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Immoral, grotesque – those are some of the words that Republican Senator Ron Johnson has used to describe the massive tax bill President Trump has made a top priority. Johnson’s comments come the same week as top Trump ally Elon Musk has expressed his disdain for the president’s proposed spending agenda. A lot is riding on this bill, which would, among other things, cut taxes, change federal food benefits and put work requirements on Medicaid, among many, many other things. It narrowly squeaked through the House, and Trump says he wants to sign the bill by July 4, but fiscal hawks like Johnson have serious concerns about how much it would add to the federal deficit – $2.4 trillion, according to a report released today by the Congressional Budget Office.

So with negotiations currently underway in the Senate and the president hitting a wall with some in his own party, what can Trump do to get his bill to the finish line? To help answer the question, we called up Senator Ron Johnson. I asked him what some of his non-negotiables are.

RON JOHNSON: The goal should have been how do we bend the deficit curve down rather than allow it to skyrocket? This bill allows it to skyrocket. It doesn’t really make a dent in that reality, and that’s unfortunate. So you need to go back to the drawing board. As I’ve been writing about since January, we need to return to a reasonable pre-pandemic level of spending. The only way that’s going to happen is we have to do the work. We have to go line by line through the federal budget, program by program – over 2,600 programs federal government – do forensic audits, expose the waste, fraud and abuse like DOGE did in their short-term effort here.

We went from 4.4 trillion in spending in 2019 to over $7 trillion. I have to believe if we actually look at this – and we haven’t taken the time or done the work to do so – you will literally find hundreds of billions of dollars of spending that if we eliminate, nobody would even notice, other than the grifters who are sucking down the waste, fraud and abuse.

DETROW: Senator, President Trump, however, is pushing for this bill to go forward. He wants to see it passed. Do you think, deep down, President Trump cares about deficits?

JOHNSON: Well, I’m going to take him at his word. He promised during his State of the Union that he was going to do the first – for the first time in 24 years, balance the federal budget. Well, in order to do that, you have to at least see deficits reducing over time.

DETROW: Why do you think he’s pushing for this bill for? Why do you think he leaned on House Republicans to pass it, given all of that?

JOHNSON: Well, again, I appreciate the fact that he’s focusing on working men and women with his tax proposals. He wants to honor those promises. I respect that. He made these promises in the campaign. But he’s running into a Senate – at least populated by people like me, who ran as a Tea Party candidate – saying that mortgaging our children’s future is wrong and immoral. Back then, it was $14 trillion in debt. Now we’re $37 trillion, on a path to $60 trillion within the next 10 years. So we need to get off this unsustainable path, and the Big Beautiful Bill doesn’t even begin to take us off this path.

DETROW: How relevant to you is Elon Musk in all of this? We saw his criticism – pretty notable, given how close he was with President Trump – calling it a, quote, “disgusting abomination,” saying this would drive the country into, quote, “debt slavery.” How politically relevant is Elon Musk in this moment, as you and other Senate Republicans are looking at this legislation?

JOHNSON: I think people recognize him as a very smart individual who did a fabulous job with DOGE exposing waste, fraud and abuse, understands numbers, and now he’s stepped away from the administration. He’s basically doing what I’m doing. He’s telling people the truth.

DETROW: Do you think that hurts President Trump, that somebody who was such a high-profile part of this administration is using those terms to criticize his signature bill?

JOHNSON: No. Again, I think we all support President Trump, and we want to see him succeed. And the only way we succeed is we have to get this debt and deficit under control. The One Big Beautiful Bill isn’t doing it. So again, I’m just talking about reality. I’m putting aside the rhetoric, the slogans, and I’m focusing on the substance and the reality, and the reality is quite grim.

DETROW: Can the bill pass right now in the Senate?

JOHNSON: No, it won’t.

DETROW: Do you think leadership understands that, or do you think this is – do you think this – how much – I guess let me ask it this way. How much pressure are you getting from the majority leader in the White House right now?

JOHNSON: Not much. Again, I’ve been talking about this since January. I’ve been warning them this doesn’t have a chance of passing, and I don’t think it does. So, you know, time to retool. They say that these multiple bills – that ship has sailed. Well, call those ships back to port, you know? We have to do this in multiple steps. We can’t put this country on a more sustainable path in one giant bill. You know, the House just proved that. Their bill does not put us on a sustainable path. It doesn’t even make a dent in it.

DETROW: It’s interesting to me, though, that you’re not – it seems like you’re not – when you say you’re not getting much pressure, you’re not getting direct calls from the White House, from the majority leader’s office saying, hey, how can you get on board?

JOHNSON: Well, I got a very nice call from the president on Monday. We agreed to work together, hone our numbers, you know, so we’re at least, you know, talking on the same page here. That’s what I’m doing right now, is I’m out there in the public, I’m laying out the reality. I’m talking numbers that are indisputable but describe our situation as grim and unsustainable, as opposed to, you know, talking about One Big Beautiful Bill and getting it passed by July. And again, that’s all rhetoric. That’s just slogans. I’m focusing on substance, which they’re going to have a hard time refuting and disputing.

DETROW: What was his response on the phone when you raised these concerns and framed this – again, his signature piece of legislation in the stark way you’re talking about it?

JOHNSON: Well, again, he points out that we have to do something. We do. So again, we have to avoid a massive automatic tax increase. Completely agree with that – we’re going to have to increase the debt ceiling. I’ve never voted for one, but I will this time. We need the funds for securing the border. We should bank whatever savings the House has come up with. They’ve done a lot of good work there. So, you know, total agreement that we have to do something – I’m willing to do it. I’m just not willing to vote as this is the only – this can’t be our only bite at the apple here. And right now, if we try and pass this, our moment will pass. We will have blown our opportunity.

So we’ve got to do this in multiple stages. I’ve been supportive of that. That’s what Leader Thune wanted to do. I think within the Senate, we’ve always thought this should be a multiple-step process. You know, Speaker Johnson and President Trump thought otherwise. I think we’ll probably prove that – the fact that it’s the only way it’s going to get done is multiple steps. Again, so as soon as they recognize that reality, I want to work with them. I want to see them succeed. I’m a big supporter of President Trump, so…

DETROW: Senator, I want to ask about one other aspect of this bill that’s gotten a lot of political attention. You represent a big agriculture state. This is also a state where 700,000 people rely on SNAP benefits, which are called FoodShare in Wisconsin. You know, the analysis of this House bill is a lot of people would lose those benefits if that program goes back to being fully funded by states. Is that a political outcome or a policy outcome that you would be on board with?

JOHNSON: We want people to get good-paying jobs so they can support themselves. Work requirements worked wonderfully under Bill Clinton. He embraced them. We need to reembrace these things and get people jobs so that they’re off of welfare, so they’re not dependent on the federal government. That’s not good for them, and that’s not, certainly, good for the federal budget.

DETROW: But work requirements – but if the funding for this changed and if that led to a drastically smaller program, that’s something you’d be comfortable with?

JOHNSON: Again, it will drastically reduce because we’ll have work requirements and people will actually go back to work. That’s been the history of this. It worked in the past. It will work in the future as well.

DETROW: Lastly, you’ve seen how the politics works in the Republican Party, in the first Trump administration and now as well. There’s an incredibly powerful force in Republican primary politics, where if you’re not with the president, you get primaried and you often lose. I don’t believe you’re on the ballot this cycle. Is that something that helps you take this stand right now?

JOHNSON: Well, again, I promised in 2010 I would always tell my constituents the truth and I’d never vote, and by extension conduct myself, with reelection in mind. So I’m focused on our children, our grandchildren, the immorality of us mortgaging their future and making it worse and worse rather than better. So that’s my loyalty, is to our kids and grandkids, to America as we know it. This is unsustainable.

DETROW: That is Senator Ron Johnson, Republican, from Wisconsin. Thank you so much.

JOHNSON: Have a great day.

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