Sen. Ron Johnson
speaker
299 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Sen. Ron Johnson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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156 witnesses, you know, first responders saying they heard explosions before the buildings came down. There was never a steel building that ever collapsed because of a fire.
To date worldwide, there's over 38,000 deaths associated with COVID vaccine. 24% of those to date either occur on the date of vaccination or within one or two days. We're right now burning about a half a trillion dollars a quarter just to get us by into next year. That should shock everybody. That's my whole purpose here. We haven't talked about the numbers.
We haven't put this in context of the big mess we're in, the deep hole we've dug ourselves. And I'm just going to force that debate.
So you want me to throw my colleagues under the bus?
Of the dollars they appropriate, they know that. But that's only 25% of the budget. The story I told you at breakfast is a couple of years ago. This was after the COVID spending spree, but we continued on that spending spree. We were in the midst of an omnibus spending debate. And this is where McConnell was doing a deal with Schumer on a massive omnibus spending bill.
And we were going to violate, for the first time, our conference's position on earmarks. You know, our conference's position is we do not accept earmarks. All of a sudden, the Republican Senate is going to be accepting earmarks. So... I got up in front of the group. I'm generally the skunk in the room or the kid who says the emperor has no clothes.
I just asked my colleagues, hey, anybody know how much we spent last year in total? Dead silence. I went out to the Washington press corps. By which you meant what we spent last year. In total, the federal government, what the federal government spent in total. Just the bottom line number. If anybody knew, they didn't volunteer.
And I went out to the Washington Press Corps, asked them the same question. And one of the reporters said, well, it's over a trillion dollars. Now, that's just discretionary spending. That's about 25% of the budget. I mean, total spending. The answer is, I think, $6.3 trillion. Understand, the federal government is the largest financial entity in the world.
We, in theory, are the 535 members of the board of directors. And nobody really knows in total how much the federal government spent because we never talk about it. And... As that relates to the current— What a weird thing not to talk about, since that's your job. But that's how it's been set up. Discretionary, which we appropriate, and then mandatory. That just gets spent.
It's on automatic pilot. So it's out of sight, it's out of mind, and it's completely out of control.
So Congress has written laws like the Social Security law, then Medicare and Medicaid, and they call those entitlements. So they're not annually appropriated. It's just you set up a law saying if you qualify, you get X number of dollars. So it's on automatic pilot.
No, none. You qualify, you get it. So whatever it takes. What has happened over the years is in addition to Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, they've slid what should be, in my mind, discretionary spending into mandatory. And so I'm the guy that pointed out the conference.
Again, do you guys realize in 2019, other mandatory, again, not Social Security, not Medicare, not Medicaid, other mandatory, pretty well runs the gamut of other appropriation accounts. That was $642 billion. Last year, fiscal year 2024, that was $1.3 trillion. This year, it's a little over a trillion. And that's pretty much, as far as the eye can see, according to CBO, a trillion dollars.
So, again, total discretionary spending is about $1.7 trillion. But they've literally slid about a trillion dollars now ongoing of other mandatory or what should be discretionary into what they call now other mandatory spending. A trillion dollars. And I don't think anybody was really aware of that either.
Yes. This year, we will spend over $7 trillion. So I remember somewhere around during the Obama administration, about when I got elected, 2010, 2011, we had our first trillion dollar a year deficit in 2009. You know, I think it was 1.4 trillion. And we stopped talking about hundreds of billions, which used to move the needle to now trillions.
You know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, it just doesn't seem that much. Yeah. $4,400 billion spent in 2019, $7,000 billion spent this year, projected to spend $7,300 billion next year. And now let's kind of bring this back to the debate that we're talking about on the one big beautiful bill.
So federal revenue will be, according to CBO, 18.1, even though it's about 17.1. But they're projecting that we're going to have an automatic tax increase next year. So they bumped that to 18.1. And federal spending is going to be about 23.4, 23.5%. So that deficit spending, where does that money come from? We borrow it or we print it. By the way, put this in even better historical context.
In 1930, less than 100 years ago, the federal government spent 3.1% of our GDP. State and local governments back then spent 9.1%. So that was pretty much the vision of our founding fathers, a limited federal government
within the constraints of the enumerated powers, and most governing at the point of the states, state and local governments, where it's more accountable, more efficient, more effective. We've blown that up. Now the federal government's spending close to 24%. State and local governments are over 16%. So now total government spending is about 40%.
It's three times what it was back less than 100 years ago. And I would argue, as government grows, our freedoms necessarily recede. Of course. Because government has more claim on your income, or they borrow money, which causes inflation, which is a silent tax.
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