House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted on Sunday that the “big, beautiful bill” the House approved last week will not lead to higher federal spending, despite criticism from fellow Republicans.
Speaking on Fox News, Johnson answered comments made earlier on the show by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. Paul described the cuts in the bill as “wimpy and anemic,” and said he would only back the bill if it did not drive up the national debt.
“I think the cuts currently in the bill are wimpy and anemic,” Paul said, “but I still would support the bill even with wimpy and anemic cuts if they weren’t going to explode the debt.” The senator also insisted he would vote “no” unless the plan dropped its $4 trillion increase to the debt limit.
Johnson pushed back, calling the debt ceiling hike “a critically important thing to do.” He said raising the limit does not mean the government plans to spend more money. “We’re extending the debt ceiling to show to creditors, the bond markets, the stock market, that Congress is serious about this,” he said.
He added that Trump himself fully supports the measure. “President Trump is dialed in 100 percent. He is a visionary leader. He does not want to spend more money. And he has the same concern about the national debt that Rand Paul and I do.”
Johnson agreed with Paul that growing deficits pose a major threat, even to national security. Yet he argued that critics underestimate the scale of the proposed reductions. “This is the biggest spending cut, I think, in the history of government on planet Earth,” Johnson said.
He conceded that the cuts are not enough on their own but said the effort marks the start of a long process. “We have a very delicate balance, and we have to start the process. I liken this to an aircraft carrier. You don’t turn an aircraft carrier on a dime. It takes a mile of open ocean. And so, it took us decades to get into this situation. This is a big step to begin to turn that aircraft carrier.”
Democrats are worried that the bill would mainly benefit the wealthiest Americans
The bill would also permanently implement several provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That law cut tax rates across most income brackets and nearly doubled the standard deduction.
However, the biggest benefit of the 2017 bill was for the wealthiest Americans. The law created a 20 percent deduction for income earned through certain business entities, known as pass-through entities, such as LLCs and partnerships. It also doubled the estate and gift tax exemption from $5.5 million to $11.2 million per person, a change that largely favored high-income families.
The new bill would lock in the corporate tax reduction from 35 percent to 21 percent, one of the most controversial elements of the 2017 law.
At that time, Trump argued that lowering the corporate rate would be “fantastic for the middle-income people and for jobs,” suggesting companies would use the extra cash to hire more workers and raise wages.
But some economists say those gains never materialized as promised. Wage growth slowed in 2019, two years after the law passed, and only saw modest improvement after the pandemic’s spike in hiring demand.
Democrats have unanimously opposed the new so-called “big, beautiful bill‘. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it a “cruel and dangerous scheme” that would hurt working-class families, especially those already feeling the pinch of President Trump’s tariffs.
Meanwhile, Daniel Hornung, a former deputy director of the National Economic Council under President Biden and now a senior fellow at MIT, called the legislation both fiscally reckless and regressive. “People making less than $50,000 a year will actually see their incomes go down, and it’s really to finance tax cuts for largely high-income people,” he said.
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