Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson defended Elon Musk’s condemnation of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” during a Wednesday segment on CNBC.
Musk called the large spending package a “disgusting abomination” in an X post on Tuesday, accusing House Republicans who voted in favor of it “[knowing they] did wrong.” Johnson, who is a current holdout in getting the spending package passed, agreed with Musk and added that the legislation has an “unsustainable nature.”
“[Musk] certainly bolsters our case. He was [on] the inside, he showed us, with President Trump, how to do this,” Johnson said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “You know, contract by contract, line by line, we have to do this forensic audit. We don’t have the time. Again, we exempt most programs, tweak them, do a CBO score. This really is out of context. The context is about $22 trillion in [the] expected deficit. And by the way, that counts for about a $4 trillion tax increase which I don’t want to incur. If we don’t incur that, you got to make up for about $4 trillion in revenue.”
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The Wisconsin senator argued that, while Senate Republicans want to see Trump “succeed,” he is willing to tell him that the legislation is “not the best idea” at the moment. Johnson also called for spending to be reduced to “a reasonable pre-pandemic level.”
“Listen, we all support the president,” Johnson told CNBC’s Joe Kernen. “We want to see him succeed. But again, my loyalty is to our kids and grandkids. We’re mortgaging their future. So there’s enough of us that have that attitude, and that very respectfully, we just have to say, ‘Mr. President, I’m sorry. One big, beautiful bill was not the best idea.’ We should’ve done what [Senate Majority Leader] John Thune always wanted to do, split this up into multiple parts … You need to keep enough on the table to force us to come back here and do the work, take the time to actually reduce spending to a reasonable level.”
The spending package, which narrowly passed the House on May 22, includes a a $3.8 trillion tax cut, a no tax on tips or overtime policy and allocates around $4.1 billion toward hiring more Border Patrol agents. Johnson, along with Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida have all stated that the bill fails to address excessive government spending.
Trump gave Senate Republicans the go-ahead as of May 26 to make major changes to the bill as congressional Republicans move swiftly to meet the White House’s July 4th deadline to pass the legislation. Paul said he will likely vote in favor of the bill if a provision on raising the debt ceiling is removed.
In the House, Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio voted against the legislation, citing the same concerns about federal spending and the deficit. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a May 22 briefing that Trump supports a primary challenge against the two congressmen for opposing the bill.
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