Constituent Asks Ron Johnson Point Blank About Big Beautiful Bill: 'What Changed Your Mind To Support It?'

During a teletownhall on Monday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) was pressed on why he changed his stance on the Big Beautiful Bill.

Transcript

00:00Next, we'll go to Mike in Fredonia.

00:03Mike, thanks for staying on.

00:04What's your question?

00:05Yes, good afternoon.

00:08I hate going backwards, but I'm very curious on why you opposed the big, beautiful bill

00:15and what specifically changed your mind to support it?

00:19Well, again, so I always supported the main elements, and the main element was preventing

00:24a massive $4 trillion automatic tax increase.

00:27Certainly didn't want to fall to under debt because of the messes, the enormous messes

00:32that Biden left, the open borders, the raging wars, the $1.9 trillion average deficits after

00:39COVID cost money to fix those messages.

00:43So we supported the border funding, defense funding, but I was really focusing on the

00:48$1.9 trillion deficit, and unfortunately, we got big spenders in our party too.

00:55And the lies, the distortions told by Democrats and the media about what we were trying to

01:00do, again, for trying to fix the Obamacare disruption.

01:05By the way, President Obama in 2012 recognized these provider taxes that are not health care,

01:12but states are doing it to game the system.

01:15So, I mean, I could maybe take a little bit of time if somebody else asked a question about

01:19exactly the distortions, the legalized fraud caused by that Obamacare expansion.

01:25But anyway, so I was doing everything I could, call it hard bargaining, negotiating.

01:30Again, what I got out of it was this budget review panel.

01:33I got a commitment from the President and the Speaker and the Leader coming back again

01:38to address spending.

01:40At some point in time, you have to take yes for an answer.

01:43Again, did one big, beautiful bill go far enough to reduce our deficit?

01:48It's not even close.

01:49In the end, I think the score was set the tax increase aside, okay, the fact that we prevented

01:56that.

01:57In total, we reduced the deficit by about $400 billion, which maybe sounds like a lot, but

02:03when you increase spending by $2.1 trillion in just one year, it's meager.

02:07It's simply inadequate.

02:08That's what I was talking about throughout the process, but I could not get my Senate

02:12colleagues to agree with me, stop the process, do a whole lot more in terms of spending reduction.

02:19That bill is going to pass, and quite honestly, had I not voted yes, it would have been less

02:25deficit reduction as they had to bargain with others who wanted more spending to get their

02:30vote.

02:31So I kind of prevented that as well.

02:33So again, complex process.

02:34You always hear about sausage making, it's ugly, I didn't like it, I'm not real happy,

02:40but in the end, I had to vote to make sure we didn't have a massive tax increase.

02:44So that's my rationale, Mike.

02:47Appreciate you staying in line, appreciate your question.