By Siobhan Hughes

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) is used to watching his fellow GOP senators look at their shoes during closed-door meetings when he waves his charts and digs in his heels on the fiscal policies that are the foundation of his political career.

But when lawmakers return to work this week, he is determined to make them look up and pay attention.

The three-term Republican is insisting on deeper spending cuts in President Trump's "big beautiful bill," saying his party is doing too little to address the country's debt burden. His hard-line stance threatens to complicate passage of the GOP's multitrillion dollar measure, which the Senate is turning to now and Trump wants on his desk by July 4.

"I'm saying things that people know need to be said," said Johnson, 70 years old. "The kid who just exposed that the king is butt-naked may not be real popular, because he kind of made everybody else look like fools, but they all recognize he was right." In the Senate, Johnson said, he would "like to think at least that my colleagues respect my passion, my genuine desire to do the right thing, to fix these problems."

He takes issue with GOP colleagues' claims that economic growth from the new tax cuts will rein in the deficit, instead siding with official scorekeepers who say the deficit will expand. He said he appreciates that Trump's ideas, such as no tax on overtime, are "directed toward working men and women, but there's nothing growth-incentivizing about his tax proposals."

The current bill -- with tax relief and border spending partially offset by Medicaid and other reductions -- is expected to increase budget deficits by $2.7 trillion through 2034, compared with doing nothing, though a final official estimate wasn't available.

Upsetting GOP's balancing act

Johnson's go-to-the-mat style is forcing to the surface fights that otherwise might play out behind closed doors, as party leaders try to keep the legislation on track through thin majorities in both chambers. House Republicans, who passed the bill by one vote last month and sent it to the Senate, have urged GOP senators to keep their changes minimal or risk losing crucial support when they send the bill back to the House.

In a 53-47 GOP-controlled Senate, Johnson can't single-handedly stop the bill. But with Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) already a "no" because the bill contains a debt-ceiling increase of at least $4 trillion and others including Sens. Rick Scott (R., Fla.) and Mike Lee (R., Utah) also signaling opposition, Republican leaders have little margin for error.

Asked about Johnson's complaints, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) said on Fox News: "I don't disagree with my good friend Ron Johnson. He's right. We have a big national debt problem." But, he said, critics needed to appreciate the cost-cutting in the bill, and he cast it as a down payment on future spending reductions.

The Wisconsin senator, a Trump ally who repeatedly won re-election even when establishment Republicans declined to back him, is known for his eccentric politics, spanning from Covid-vaccine skepticism, to a cameo role in the events leading to Trump's first impeachment, to floating debunked theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But he is also the author of a popular piece of Trump's first-term tax cuts -- and is now looking into what former President Joe Biden's top officials knew about his mental acuity, a sore spot for Democrats that many Americans want to see addressed.

"He's his own man, I guess is the way to put it. And sometimes that's positive and sometimes negative," said Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School poll. Johnson's repeated election wins in his battleground state are due to "people seeing him as someone who's firm in his convictions."

A head of a plastics manufacturer before riding the 2010 tea-party wave into the Senate, Johnson made a mark when his party pushed through Trump's 2017 tax plan. He refused to go along until he ensured "pass throughs" -- businesses whose tax obligations pass through to owners' individual returns -- got similar relief to corporations. Economists criticized the cuts for their complexity and disproportionately benefiting the wealthy. But taxpayers such as freelancers or small-business owners loved it because they benefited too.

"In the end, people did appreciate what I did, but it wasn't fun," Johnson said. He won a seat on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee. On the current fight, he said, "We've got a slogan again -- 'one big, beautiful bill,' but the substance simply doesn't match it."

Earlier this month, House Republicans voted to extend and increase the pass-through tax cut, at a cost of about $820 billion over a decade.

Turning back the clock on spending

Johnson casts his current crusade as part of a bid to return the U.S. to prepandemic levels of spending, arguing that the U.S. needs to get control of its debt. Publicly held debt as a share of gross domestic product is approaching the record levels reached after World War II.

JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon on Friday predicted a crisis unless the U.S. takes steps to address the debt. Moody's Ratings last month downgraded the U.S. government, citing doubts that Congress would do anything significant to reduce deficits.

Beyond Medicaid work requirements in the House bill, Johnson wants to take aim at a provision of the 2010 Affordable Care Act that allows states to shift to the federal government 90% of the tab for low-income, mostly able-bodied adults who became eligible for Medicaid under the law. Johnson wants to rescind the federal matching rate for the expansion population, cutting it back to as little as 50% and removing billions of dollars from many of his Republican colleagues' states. Wisconsin is one of only 10 states that didn't expand Medicaid.

"This isn't Medicaid anymore -- this is Medicaid plus Obamacare," Johnson said. "It was designed to incentivize more Americans to become dependent on the government...it's worked marvelously well, and now you've got Republicans defending it."

Those Republicans include Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), first elected to office after the populist era ushered in by Trump. The president himself has repeatedly warned Republicans not to go too fair in cutting Medicaid.

Some colleagues suspect Johnson feels free to take a tough stance because he might not run for re-election in 2028. Johnson told reporters in mid-May that "in the House, President Trump can threaten a primary," but "can't pressure me that way."

Asked about his plans, Johnson said that he is "one member of the United States Senate who would rather go home." But he didn't shut the door on running again, describing how he put aside similar reservations in 2022 in order to serve as a voice for people who said they were hurt by vaccines. He won by 1 percentage point.

Johnson also waves away concerns that his efforts to probe Biden's mental state could backfire.

As chairman of the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations, he has sent letters to more than two-dozen former Biden officials, saying that he would issue subpoenas if they didn't speak voluntarily to his panel.

He said that his goal is to push officials to understand their obligation to invoke the 25th amendment when a president is unable to serve. Johnson said he wasn't worried that Democrats would use similar arguments against Trump.

"I don't think the Trump White House is concerned," Johnson said. "They understand that he's got top-notch mental acuity. He's on his game. He's fully engaged."

Write to Siobhan Hughes at Siobhan.hughes@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 02, 2025 05:00 ET (09:00 GMT)

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