Sen. Ron Johnson explained why he won’t vote for the “One Big, Beautiful” budget reconciliation package passed by House Republicans Tuesday evening with FBN’s Larry Kudlow. Trump is “going to have to embrace a smaller, beautiful bill,” Johnson said. “I’m sorry-beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

SEN. RON JOHNSON: I’ve been pretty consistent. What I’m asking us to do is what our British generation did after World War II-they returned to pre-war spending levels. We need to return to a pre-pandemic spending level. I’ve laid out a number of options, and it’s not necessarily easy. But you have to do the work. You have to go line by line, DOGE showed how to do this, through the federal budget. Take a look at total expenditures-Clinton in 1998, Obama in 2014, Trump in 2019. If you take Social Security, Medicare, and interest alone, and then increase all other outlays by population growth and inflation-that’s your basic control. If you do that, your budget would be between $ 5.5 and $ 6.5 trillion — way below where we are right now, which is in excess of $ 7 trillion. So again, I agree with your previous guests. We have a spending problem. I agree with Scott Bessent, who said we don’t have a revenue problem-we have a spending problem. I don’t want to increase anybody’s taxes. We need to reduce the size and scope of government. You don’t defeat the deep state-which is the reason I voted for President Trump-by funding it at President Biden’s levels. But you have to do the work, and it’s going to take time. What the House is doing right now-they aren’t even talking numbers. They talk about $ 1.5 trillion. Sounds like a lot-it’s not. You have to take the time to go through the budget. They are exempting most programs, looking at a couple, tweaking them a little bit, trying to get a CBO score, slapping the hands, and saying: Great, we have one big beautiful bill. I’m sorry-beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It’s not me at the moment. … LARRY KUDLOW: But on the other side, look-economic growth is very important. I don’t think the House factored in enough. If you have these lower tax rates-and the Senate may improve upon the tax component-throw the CBO out the window and let’s have a current policy baseline. Deficits to GDP already are coming down. That’s what the House number said. You get it down a lot faster and a lot deeper by going that route. So lower spending-sure. But growth and tax relief are components, Senator Johnson. SEN. RON JOHNSON: We should have used current policy back in 2017. We shouldn’t even be talking about automatic tax increases. I would just extend the current tax line, and we could’ve done it by February, but we didn’t. But again, the CBO-I’m not a real fan of them-but I think this is actually the best scenario. They’re projecting $ 22 trillion of additional deficits over the next 10 years, and that includes the assumption that we’ll increase taxes by $ 4 trillion. If we don’t do that, we aren’t getting that $ 4 trillion. We may get it through growth, but again, you’re not getting it through growth if you continue to fund government and all of this overregulation. Again, President Trump cut regulation. I don’t know who’s going to be the president for the next four years, so this is our one moment. That unprecedented increase in spending-from $ 4.4 trillion to $ 7 trillion-that’s 58%. We should be able to get it down to a reasonable, pre-pandemic level. Again, $ 4.4 to $ 6.5 trillion-it’s still an enormous increase, but it’s a reasonable thing we should do. But you have to take the time and do the work. LARRY KUDLOW: What would a second and/or third bill look like in your judgment? You’ve talked about three bills. You and I have had this conversation before. What would that look like? SENATOR JOHNSON: I think three bills is off the table because we’re scrunching time now. So I would prioritize border and defense. Hone the numbers-they’re asking for way too much. The House has already shown us-they’ve done some good work, but we need to do more. And I’d extend the current tax code and increase the debt ceiling to give us a year. That’s an enormous increase-about $ 2.5 trillion-to get us into 2026. That should shock everybody. Then we sit down and we do the hard work. I proposed a budget review panel-senators, House members, OMB-bring forward those department heads and make them justify: Why are you spending more than 2019, with inflation? Explain yourself. How can it get back down? In business, Larry, this is a five-minute conversation. I told you guys: Increase your budgets. You’re 10% above it. Cut it.
RealClearPolitics Videos