It won’t be smooth sailing ahead for the White House…
“They just kept talking about $1.5 trillion. They set the bar way too low,” Johnson told reporters.
“The goal of the House effort has been to pass one big, beautiful bill. It’s rhetoric. It’s false advertising,” he continued. “The goal should have been reduce average annual deficits, so we have to focus on spending.”
When asked about reports that Trump strong-armed right-wing members of the House into supporting the bill despite their reservations about the deficit increase, Johnson didn’t hold back—
“In the House, President Trump can threaten a primary, and those guys want to keep their seats. I understand the pressure,” said Johnson. “Can’t pressure me that way.”
“I ran in 2010 because we were mortgaging our children’s future. It’s wrong,” he added.
“We were $14 trillion in debt, now we’re thirty-seven,” he went on. “Have you been watching what the bond markets are doing in relation to the one big, beautiful bill? They’re not thinking it’s a very big, beautiful bill.”
“Everybody likes the tax cut, but when you’re $37 trillion in debt on the path to over $60 trillion in debt, right, when the Social Security Trust Fund is running out, somebody’s got to be the dad that says, ‘I know everybody wants to go to Disney World, but we just can’t afford it,’” stated Johnson.
“So, I guess, I guess that’s what’s going to have to happen here in the Senate,” he added.
While Johnson’s conservative concerns about the bill mean are encouraging because they mean that it might have a difficult time passing the Senate, the real problems with the legislation are that it guts Medicaid, gives massive tax cuts to the rich, and needlessly skyrockets the Pentagon’s budget.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, more than 7 million Americans could end up uninsured over the coming decade as a result of this bill.
Not only that, but the bill eviscerates clean energy funding and slashes federal programs that fight pollution just as climate change is heating up.
The “big, beautiful bill” is an utter disaster. Call your senators and make sure they wholeheartedly oppose it.
