Republican Sen. Ron Johnson on Wednesday blasted President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” as “immoral” and “grotesque,” and reiterated that he will vote against it unless his GOP colleagues make major changes.
“This is immoral, what us old farts doing to our young people,” Johnson said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” after sounding alarms that the massive tax-and-spending-cut bill would add trillions of dollars to national deficits.
“This is grotesque, what we’re doing,” Johnson said. “We need to own up to that. This is our moment.”
“I can’t accept the scenario, I can’t accept it, so I won’t vote for it, unless we are serious about fixing it,” he continued.
Johnson has been among the Senate’s loudest GOP critics of the budget bill that narrowly passed the House last month.
Johnson and other fiscal hawks have taken aim over its effect on the nation’s debt. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated later Wednesday that the bill would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
Johnson has proposed splitting the bill into two parts, though Trump insists on passing his agenda in a single package.
“The president and Senate leadership has to understand that we’re serious now,” Johnson said of himself and the handful of other GOP senators whose opposition to the bill could imperil its chances.
“They all say, ‘Oh, we can pressure these guys.’ No, you can’t.”
Republicans hold a narrow 53-47 majority in the Senate, so they can only afford to lose a handful of votes to get the bill passed in a party-line vote.
“Let’s discuss the numbers, and let’s focus on our children and grandchildren, whose futures are being mortgaged, their prospects are being diminished by what we are doing to them,” Johnson said.
Johnson’s comments came one day after Elon Musk ripped into the spending bill, calling it a “disgusting abomination” that will lead to exploding deficits. The White House brushed aside Musk’s comments.
Johnson said Musk’s criticisms bolster the case against the bill.
“He’s in the inside, he showed … President Trump how to do this, you know, contract by contract, line by line,” Johnson said of Musk. “We have to do that.”
Johnson said his campaign against the bill in its current form is not a “long shot,” because he thinks there are “enough” Republican senators who will vote against the bill.
“We want to see [Trump] succeed, but again, my loyalty is to our kids and grandkids,” he said.
“So there’s enough of us who have that attitude that very respectfully we just have say, ‘Mr. President, I’m sorry, ‘one, big, beautiful bill’ was not the best idea,” he added.