{"id":9183,"date":"2025-05-14T08:51:26","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T08:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/ron-johnson-is-threatening-to-tank-the-gop-megabill-hes-been-here-before\/"},"modified":"2025-05-14T08:51:26","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T08:51:26","slug":"ron-johnson-is-threatening-to-tank-the-gop-megabill-hes-been-here-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/ron-johnson-is-threatening-to-tank-the-gop-megabill-hes-been-here-before\/","title":{"rendered":"Ron Johnson is threatening to tank the GOP megabill. He\u2019s been here before."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Ron Johnson<\/a> is no stranger to being a squeaky wheel inside the Senate GOP. Now he\u2019s asking for trillions of dollars worth of grease.<\/p>\n

The frequently cantankerous Wisconsin senator is pushing his fellow Republicans to deliver huge spending cuts as part of their party-line domestic policy bill \u2014 and vowing to block President Donald Trump\u2019s top legislative priority if his demands, which are shared by a small cadre of fiscal hawks, aren\u2019t met.<\/p>\n

As the megabill moves through the House, Johnson\u2019s increasingly vocal warnings are an early indicator for Senate GOP leaders and the White House that they\u2019ve got major headaches awaiting across the Capitol. Senate Republicans can only afford three defections on the expected party-line vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s enough of us that would say, \u2018No, that\u2019s not adequate,\u2019\u201d Johnson said in an interview where he described his insistence on returning the federal government to \u201cpre-pandemic\u201d level of spending.<\/p>\n

The math issue that creates for Republicans is stark: The House GOP is struggling to hit $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, while Johnson and his allies want to go much, much further. Returning to the level of federal expenditures that predates multiple rounds of pandemic stimulus, a major infrastructure bill and the Democrats\u2019 own domestic-policy megabill would, by Johnson\u2019s own estimation, require more than $6 trillion in cuts.<\/p>\n

GOP leaders might laugh off such an audacious demand if Johnson didn\u2019t have a history of getting what he wants.<\/p>\n

The last time Republicans wrote a party-line tax bill, in 2017, he vowed to oppose the package as he pushed for better treatment of so-called \u201cpass-through\u201d businesses, which comprise most privately held companies. Formerly an executive for a Oshkosh plastics manufacturer, Johnson argued that the bill needed to benefit smaller businesses as much as it would benefit large corporations that were in line to get a major rate cut.<\/p>\n

His hardball tactics paid off big time: Republicans ultimately included a new 20 percent deduction rate for pass-through business income, an estimated $414 billion line item in the $1.5 trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.<\/p>\n

Now, with key TCJA provisions expiring, he\u2019s asking for roughly 10 times the fiscal impact, and his colleagues have learned not to brush him off.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe’s as serious as a heart attack,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer<\/a> (R-N.D.), who credited Johnson for driving a hard bargain back in 2017. But he also suggested any Republican would have a hard time standing in the way of the party\u2019s top legislative priority: “Sometimes when confronted with a binary choice people compromise a little more.”<\/p>\n

While Johnson is setting his sights in the multi-trillion-dollar range, he\u2019s hinting that a substantially smaller settlement might be possible: He suggested in an interview that lawmakers could enshrine a chunk of the overall cuts in the pending GOP bill while also setting up a bicameral commission to find the rest by going \u201cline-by-line\u201d through the federal budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cElon Musk is showing us how to do this right?\u201d he said. \u201cYou expose, \u2018Whoa, what are we doing spending money on that?\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But Johnson hasn\u2019t yet found buy-in for that idea from colleagues who have been burned by one too many deficit-cutting commissions that ultimately sputtered. The response he\u2019s gotten, he said, is \u201cwe don\u2019t have time to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, okay then, I don\u2019t have the support for the bill,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

GOP leaders believe they have a strategy to navigate around Johnson, which goes back to their decision to bundle together wildly disparate parts of their domestic agenda \u2014 tax cuts, border security upgrades, deportation funding, energy incentives, Pentagon plus-ups and more.<\/p>\n

That, they believe, will make it too big to fail. But Johnson had a less optimistic metaphor as he gaggled with reporters on Wednesday, saying it instead \u201cmight be like the Titanic and may be going down.”<\/p>\n

Johnson has instead repeatedly floated breaking up the bill into two or three or more pieces \u2014 something that would force GOP leaders in both chambers to abandon a hard-fought budget blueprint and go back to the drawing board.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s no stranger to playing the skunk-at-the-garden-party role inside the Senate GOP. Abandoned by national party committees during his 2016 Senate run, he has long felt unusually free to chart his own path and sometimes critique his own party\u2019s leadership. He\u2019s used his leadership posts on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to pursue matters top GOP leaders would otherwise just leave alone \u2014 most recently conspiracy theories related to the 9\/11 terror attacks<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s not the only potential Senate Republican holdout GOP leaders are dealing with on the \u201cbig, beautiful bill.\u201d Sen. Rand Paul<\/a> of Kentucky is all but guaranteed to be a \u201cno\u201d after opposing the budget blueprint. Several others are viewed as potential swing votes, including Republican Sens. Josh Hawley<\/a> of Missouri, Lisa Murkowski<\/a> of Alaska and Susan Collins<\/a> of Maine.<\/p>\n

Asked about the House bill, Murkowski quipped, \u201cIt\u2019s not beautiful yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senators are expected to make changes to the House bill, if and when it comes over, meaning Johnson will have an opportunity to put his stamp on the legislation. He\u2019s a member of the Finance Committee, which has broad jurisdiction over both taxes and health care, where the GOP is looking to reap most of the savings.<\/p>\n

Senate Majority Leader John Thune<\/a>, another Finance member who put a big stamp on the 2017 bill, said Republicans are looking to end up with spending cuts on the \u201cnorth end\u201d of the $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion range.<\/p>\n

“We take all our members seriously,\u201d Thune said about Johnson. \u201cI know it’s a huge priority for him, which is why I’ve suggested all along that [the House] prioritize spending cuts in the package.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans, of course, are also betting that Trump can ultimately force the fiscal hawks, who are typically more MAGA-aligned than moderates like Collins and Murkowski, to stand down. That\u2019s what happened earlier this year when the budget plan was teetering, and Johnson was invited with other fiscal hard-liners on the Budget Committee to meet with Trump at the White House.<\/p>\n

Johnson was among them, and he, too, eventually fell in line.<\/p>\n

Now, he says, he\u2019s determined to make good on campaign promises to get the nation\u2019s fiscal house in order that date back to his first run as a tea-party-influenced political outsider in 2010.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to lead,\u201d he told reporters Wednesday, adding, \u201cWhen I talk to Trump about it, he agrees with my approach.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ron Johnson is no stranger to being a squeaky wheel inside the Senate GOP. Now he\u2019s asking for trillions of dollars worth of grease. The frequently cantankerous Wisconsin senator is pushing his fellow Republicans to deliver huge spending cuts as part of their party-line domestic policy bill \u2014 and vowing to block President Donald Trump\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}