Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., is seen within the U.S. Capitol throughout a collection of votes on Thursday, April 3, 2025.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Name, Inc. | Getty Photos
Sen. Ron Johnson mentioned Sunday that he thinks he has sufficient GOP colleagues on board along with his opposition to the Home’s “big, beautiful bill” to stall its progress and make modifications.
The Wisconsin Republican’s remarks underscore the possibly tough path forward for the sweeping home coverage package deal, which just narrowly passed the House final week.
As Home Speaker Mike Johnson urges his Senate colleagues to not “meddle” with the invoice an excessive amount of, fiscal hawks within the Senate have signaled they will not help the package deal in its present kind.
“We have now sufficient to cease the method till the president will get critical about spending discount and decreasing the deficit,” Sen. Johnson mentioned on CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’
Sen. Johnson and a few of his Senate colleagues have raised considerations that the Home invoice will result in skyrocketing federal deficits, a criticism that Speaker Johnson has brushed apart.
Sen. Johnson mentioned that the “first objective” of the funds reconciliation course of “needs to be to cut back the deficit, this really will increase it.”
He has repeatedly mentioned that the federal authorities must return to “pre-pandemic degree spending.”
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., additionally on Sunday referred to as the spending cuts within the Home invoice “wimpy and anemic.”
“However I nonetheless would help the invoice, even with wimpy and anemic cuts, in the event that they weren’t going to blow up the debt,” Paul mentioned on “Fox Information Sunday.”
“The issue is the mathematics would not add up, they’ll explode the debt,” he continued.
An analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Funds Workplace mentioned that the sweeping package deal may improve the deficit by $3.8 trillion over the following decade.