WASHINGTON — As the Senate prepares to consider the sprawling domestic package that House Republicans passed last week, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said he thinks there are “enough” Republicans to “stop the process” in order to prioritize stronger reductions in spending and the national deficit.
The Wisconsin Republican has criticized the bill’s impact on the deficit, characterizing outsize spending as “mortgaging our children’s future.” The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the bill would add $2.3 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years.
Johnson said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” that congressional Republicans should examine spending “line by line, like DOGE has done” to find areas to eliminate.
The senator’s criticism comes as the Senate is gearing up to consider changes to the House bill, which passed by a single vote, setting up another fight over government deficit levels, funding for programs and attempts to rein in spending ahead of Republicans’ goal to send a final version of the bill to President Donald Trump’s desk by July 4.
Several Republicans in the Senate have expressed skepticism about aspects of the bill for what they view as inadequate spending cuts or shrinking Medicaid access and have promised to change it. Any changes to the bill would need to be approved by the House before it goes to Trump.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday” that the the current spending cuts in the bill “are wimpy and anemic,” adding that he “still would support the bill even with wimpy and anemic cuts if they weren’t going to explode the debt.”
“The problem is the math doesn’t add up,” Paul said, adding that “they’re going to explode the debt.”
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., has also criticized potential Medicaid cuts. The bill, if passed in its current form, is expected to rescind health coverage for about 8.6 million people, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.
Hawley told NBC News shortly after the House passed the bill that “the Senate will basically write its own version of this bill, and I just want to make sure that there are no Medicaid benefit cuts.”
In an op-ed in The New York Times earlier this month, Hawley accused a wing of the Republican Party of wanting “Republicans to build our big, beautiful bill around slashing health insurance for the working poor.”
“But that argument is both morally wrong and politically suicidal,” Hawley said.
When asked during a Sunday interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” to respond to Hawley’s comments, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that “we are not cutting Medicaid” but instead “working in the elements of fraud, waste and abuse.”
The House speaker repeatedly defended the bill’s impact on people who would lose Medicaid coverage, instead casting the bill as targeting waste, fraud and abuse among Medicaid users. He said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the Republican-led bill was not cutting Medicaid, arguing that “the numbers of Americans who are affected are those that are entwined in our work to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse.”
The speaker pointed to “illegal aliens on Medicaid,” saying that “Medicaid is not intended for non-U.S. citizens.” Certain non-U.S. citizens are allowed to enroll in government health care options.
Johnson also criticized “young men, for example, who are on Medicaid and not working.” He argued that people were committing “fraud” by “choosing not to work when they can.”
Anchor Jake Tapper asked Johnson whether he believed that if any of his constituents were to lose benefits like Medicaid, it would be because they should not have received those benefits “because they were committing waste, fraud or abuse.”
“Yeah,” Johnson answered. “Look, my district, as every district in America, has people who are on the program who shouldn’t.”
Democrats have seized on potential Medicaid cuts, blasting Republicans’ domestic policy bill and working to characterize the GOP as willing to cut health insurance options for poor people while increasing the wealth of Americans with higher incomes.
NBC News previously reported that during negotiations over the bill last week, Trump visited House Republicans and instructed them, “Don’t f— around with Medicaid,” according to two lawmakers present.
The House speaker said during multiple Sunday-morning interviews that he has urged Senate Republicans to make as few changes to the bill as possible. The House and Senate will ultimately need to reconcile different versions of the bill before it heads to Trump’s desk to be signed into law.
“I had lunch with my Senate Republican colleagues on Tuesday, their weekly luncheon, and I encouraged them to remember that we are one team,” Johnson said on CBS News. “It’s the Senate and the House Republicans together that will deliver this ball over the goal line, so to speak. And I encouraged them to make as few modifications as possible, remembering that I have a very delicate balance.”
The bill passed the House 215-214, with two Republicans opposing the bill, one voting “present” and two missing the vote.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., criticized the bill last week, saying that “Trump promised to love and cherish Medicaid.”
“Instead, his One Big Ugly Bill represents the largest healthcare cut in our country’s history,” Jeffries said in a statement. “Millions of people will lose their Medicaid coverage and hardworking American taxpayers will be forced to pay higher premiums, copays and deductibles.”
