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Forbes Breaking News
  • 4 months ago
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.
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