WASHINGTON — Wisconsin’s Republican Sen. Ron Johnson has been at the center of a storm on Capitol Hill.
As Republicans try to enact President Donald Trump’s tax and spending priorities, Johnson has repeatedly argued his party isn’t doing enough to cut spending. This week, Senate Republican leaders released proposed legislation to enact the president’s agenda, after the House passed its bill last month.
Johnson didn’t support the House measure and says he is not in favor of the legislation crafted by Senate Republican leaders, either. Republicans have set a self-imposed deadline of July 4 to get a final bill to the President’s desk. But Johnson said Republicans will need more time, likely until August.
“My main issue is that it’s just not meeting the moment,” he said. “We literally increase spending more in one year than what we’re going to reduce spending over 10, so we need to do more. It’ll take time to do more.”
On Wednesday, Johnson released his own report on the legislation. In it, he criticizes the White House for failing to cut spending.
“In his address to the Joint Session of Congress on March 4, 2025, President Trump pledged, ‘And in the near future I want to do what has not been done in 24 years–balance the federal budget.’ The first step in accomplishing this goal must be to bend the trajectory of deficits down toward balancing the budget,” Johnson writes in the report. “It is clear from the above facts, figures and analysis that the OBBB does not accomplish that goal.”
OBBB refers to the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the name the president gave to the legislation.
Democrats have been sounding the alarm about cuts to Medicaid. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the House version of the bill would increase the number of people without health insurance by 16 million people by 2034.
In a recent interview with Spectrum News, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., said, “I think it’s just horrendous, frankly.”
The Senate Republican legislation would cut Medicaid spending even more deeply—a move Johnson said he agrees with.
But some Republicans, including Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, have said the Medicaid cuts under the Senate Republican proposal go too far.
“Rural hospitals are going to be in bad shape,” he said.
Johnson said he would like Republicans to take aim at the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Under the expansion, the federal government pays 90% of the costs to states that extend Medicaid to all residents under the age of 65 who meet income guidelines.
“For every dollar the state puts in, $9 the federal government kicks in. So that has led to all kinds of abuse—provider taxes, provider fees, up coding,” Johnson said. “Nobody on my side wants to eliminate or threaten benefits to people that Medicaid was designed to help. We’re trying to save Medicaid for those people… I’m trying to prevent a debt crisis—a really serious one.”
Johnson has pushed for going through the budget line-by-line to identify other places to cut. He said he’s working with the White House to hire auditors. The White House has not yet responded to a request for comment.
“I’d love to move the folks that are left over from DOGE into this effort, but again, even that’s going to take some time to establish and really get it right,” Johnson said, referring to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, an initiative by the Trump administration to cut federal spending.
Johnson said he won’t vote for a bill until he gets a commitment from the President, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune that this isn’t a one-and-done bill. He said they have a unique opportunity to return to a reasonable pre-pandemic level of spending, and “it’s going to take unprecedented actions by Congress to rein it back in.”
To support the legislation, Johnson said he needs a “commitment to a process to achieve and maintain” a pre-pandemic level of spending. When asked if he would vote for a bill that doesn’t achieve that many cuts, Johnson said “no” and then quickly added, “well, yeah.”
“We're not going to achieve pre-pandemic levels of spending in this bill,” Johnson said. “I mean, I never thought we could. We can put ourselves on a path to do so, though, and I'm pretty open to other people's ideas when it comes to that.”
Johnson also doesn’t support the Senate plan to increase the nation’s borrowing limit by $5 trillion.
“The debt ceiling is our only leverage. It's our only control,” he said. “So I would rather do it in smaller increments. It has to be for at least a year, because we can only do it once every year in reconciliation. So I would split it up into two. I would have one now, and I'd have one for the fiscal year 2026 reconciliation. Just keep pressure on all of us keep that leverage that we have to do more in terms of return to a reasonable pre-pandemic level of spending and stop mortgaging our kids’ future.”
At the Wisconsin Republican State Convention, Johnson stressed unity. When asked how it feels to be the one speaking out against the GOP legislation, Johnson said he’s trying to unify the party around a better bill.
“Even President Trump said he wants the Senate to improve the bill, so we're trying to improve it by a lot, and that's good,” Johnson said. “Again, I respect the people I'm dealing with. I don't want to make their job harder, but my higher loyalty is to our kids and grandkids. I mean, we are literally mortgaging their future. It's immoral. It's unconscionable we're doing. Somebody's got to stand up and say that.”
Johnson said he’s optimistic about the conversations he’s having now with fellow Republicans in the Senate.
“We're all talking and working with each other in good faith. Again, I think that's unifying in the end,” he said.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.