Senator Ron Johnson
Appearances
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Power corrupts. Government is power, and it's been corrupt. Nobody knew in total how much we spend because we never even talk about it. The first goal of this Republican budget reconciliation should be don't add to the deficit. I voted for President Trump. because I wanted him to defeat the deep state. You don't defeat the deep state by continuing to fund it at Biden's levels.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
So I tried to lay out the basic numbers. That's what I was talking about. You know, my pre-pandemic levels of spending, Clinton, if you use that process, go from 1.7 to 5.5 trillion. That's how you plus up that spending. Obama would be 6.2, Trump's 2019, 6.5. So now you've got a baseline budget.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
You've always heard these Republican members of Congress running for office saying we're going to go to zero-based budgeting. They're not even willing to go to 5.5 to 6.5 level baseline of budget. Again, what is the process that just might work? Doge has kind of shown it to us. Line by line, you have to scrutinize all this. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of time.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
And that's why I've always argued for a multiple approach here, multiple step. Provide the border funding. I would just extend current tax law. I mean, I would have voted for that if we had been smart enough to use current policy back then. We wouldn't be even having this conversation. Extend current tax law takes an automatic massive tax increase off the table.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Increase the debt ceiling enough for a year to keep pressure on the process to do the work. To go line by line, expose spending. I've got to believe, when you've gone from $4,400 billion to $7,000 billion worth of spending, if you start scrutinizing that line by line, there would literally be hundreds of billions of dollars that the public wouldn't even know were not spending.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
The only people who would know would be the grifters who are sucking down the pork.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Well, again, as I pointed out, Most don't even recognize the full reality. They don't know the numbers. I've heard it said, I didn't hear McConnell say it personally, but I've heard him say, show me a member of Congress who ever lost the election because they spent too much money. So there's no public pressure not to spend. People love tax cuts. People love the free money.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
We collectively as a society are whistling by the graveyard. Nobody wants to say that this is unsustainable because to fix it is painful. I mean, you are going to have to reduce spending. And then you're very open to the political accusations as, you know, coming in. We're trying to slash Medicaid for disabled children.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Now we're trying to preserve it for disabled children, try and get the able bodied, childless children. working age adults back to work and on private sector healthcare. But again, that's a more difficult argument to make. So it's just the way that the process just plows on. We've never, as I said, there's never been a process to actually control spending. So this is what we've always done.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
You come up to these deadlines, you put everything into one big bill. You give people things that you have to vote for. You don't want to default on the debt. You don't want to increase taxes. So those elements you bundle up with a bunch of crap.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
and you twist people's arms to pay for it, and keeping them basically ignorant because you never talk about the massive numbers, the massive problem that we're really in.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I mean, people kind of know it, but as long as the press isn't reporting on it, as long as the press isn't connecting the dots that the massive deaths of spending is why you can't afford things, why your dollar you held in 2019 is only worth 80 cents versus the buck it should be. By the way, a dollar you held in 1998 is worth 51 cents. OK, so we again, we don't teach people.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
There's no there's no public pressure in terms of reducing spending or reducing deficit. There's just virtually none from conservatives right now. I'm getting it all the time. Boy, make sure that you make no tax on tips permanent. Make sure you make no tax on overtime permanent. So, well, first of all, we probably shouldn't be doing either of those. By the way, I'm all for no tax on cash tips.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
We can't. can't collect it anyway, so don't even try. All for that. But you've got to recognize these other tax cuts, they're not going to grow the economy. They're not going to focus on the one component that Besson's talking about, that we have to grow our economy.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I don't even think it's even 50 and 60 people constructing this. I think it's a much smaller group of people, and then you maybe have 50 or 60 chiming in on one issue or another. Let me push back on overtime with you, though. I ran a plastics operation continuous shift. If you're going to work 24-7, you need four shifts.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
So part of the problem with no tax on overtime, first of all, it's no tax on some overtime. So that's going to add to the regulatory burden. I wouldn't want to be the accounting clerk having to keep track of that, but I know with computers it's easier to do so. But in public service employee units, they refuse to go to four shifts. because they like the overtime.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
They should be forced to go to four shifts because they burn out, pay them more. But from my standpoint, having run a continuous shift operation, I think there's enough incentive paying time and a half or double time on Sunday for people to work Income is income. I don't want to segregate. I don't want to socially or economically engineer through the tax code.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
And that's just part of that economic engineering through the tax code. I love the fact we're focusing on working men and women. Great. But I would rather simplify the tax code for them and overall lower their tax burden. But again, lower the rates, broaden the base. But we're not doing that. We lowered the rates and we made it more complex. We did not simplify the tax code in 2017.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
One of the reasons I actually want a two-step process to simplify and rationalize our tax code.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Well, I've talked to numerous people who benefit from carried interest. I always ask them, can you explain to me why that's not ordinary income? And they can't. It is ordinary income. Speaking to other ones that are pretty big into it, they do make a pretty powerful case that all these deals, all these structures, all these business arrangements are already structured that way.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
You can eliminate that break and it's really not going to raise any revenue. They make a reasonably convincing case there too. So that's kind of where we're at on that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Yeah, my guess is just not going to happen. Right. And kind of going the overtime, it's just not that big a revenue generator one way or the other. Might make you feel good. Could screw up the way deals are made. Is it really worth messing with?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Well, I think it's insane that we've been shutting down coal-fired electrical generation. We need a lot of it. I would really focus on nuclear myself. I think that is, you know, if you're concerned about climate change, yeah, I'm not. We'll adapt. But nuclear would be the thing we ought to be pushing. I really don't want to subsidize energy production. I don't want to subsidize anything.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Again, I want a simple and rational tax story. So my approach would always be to simplify those things. I don't want to pull the rug out from under people. I mean, if we've subsidized things and people made investment based on certain things, kind of respect that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I say Congress in general doesn't understand what you're talking about. Again, I said, I don't want to pull the rug out from other people. I understand investment because I was in business. But again, I want to move toward a more simple system. And again, it's insane what government Yeah, all the green new energy thing. It misallocates capital.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Take a look at what's happening in Europe and Germany and stuff. They're artificially driving up the cost of power for what? OK, I mean, it's a fantasy. It's a self-inflicted wound. We spent like five or six trillion dollars globally on climate change. And whether you believe it or not, we haven't bent the needle. That's just five or six trillion dollars basically wasted.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
So, yeah, I recognize the fact we've wasted a lot of money. We've incentivized people for a certain type of power. The solution would be quit doing it. long-term and let the marketplace provide as much energy cheap as possible. Again, protecting the environment. I don't want pollution, but the whole climate change thing is... I care about electron...
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Let me start. You talked about when I first ran for election in 2010, I ran out of the Tea Party, never had been involved in politics whatsoever, and didn't even decide to run until the end of April, announced in May, started a campaign during the summer, did all those parades. What I would shout during the parades was, this is a fight for freedom. We're mortgaging our children's future.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
First of all, it was beneficial for no other reason than it exposed how oblivious and ignorant Congress was of all this waste, fraud, and abuse. Okay, I mean, that has value right there.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
It should have embarrassed every member of Congress, all these department heads that this kind of spending, this kind of crap was going on, and they weren't doing oversight on it, they weren't taking a look at it, and, but.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
And I tried getting Elon's attention, quite honestly, about give me somebody in Doge that I can work with so as soon as you identify the spending, we can connect it to an appropriation account. We can connect it to a mandatory spending account so we can actually codify it. He didn't seem to have the time. And quite honestly, in a personal conversation, he said, well, we don't have to do that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Well, we do have to do that. And so, you know, we've been hammering Russ Vogt, you know, send us a rescission package. You know, finally he bundles up $9 billion when on, I think the last time I looked at Doge's website, they were up to $165 million. It's higher than that now. They're kind of, they have fallen short of the goal. Listen, I'm not criticizing for that. them for that at all.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
But the fact matters, it has to be codified. Just putting it on the website is valuable, but we got to bank the savings. And so anything that's mandatory has got to be done through reconciliation. Otherwise, it's got to be done from rescission. You got to get the public support for this. I don't know why they haven't done it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
There's a question. They've stopped contracts. They're no longer spending money that way. But the question is whether the president on his own can impound those funds. So they may not be spent, but they're just going to be sitting out there as unallocated spending to be spent sometime in the future, unless you rescind them. And again, that's the beauty of rescission and reconciliation.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
We don't need Democrats to help us there. We can do that with simple majorities, both the House and the Senate. And again, it'll be pretty depressing. President Trump in his first administration sent up a $15 billion rescission package and has voted down the Senate to Republican senators vote against it. And my guess is they paid no political price for doing that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Any Republican that would vote against the rescission package ought to pay a pretty huge political price in voting that thing down, but it's going to take presidential leadership. He's got to be focusing on that. And I'm sorry, I don't think President Trump, he's doing all kinds of great things. He's not focused on reducing spending.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
It's wrong. It's immoral. It has to stop. That was my campaign theme in 2010. I still view myself more Tea Party than Republican Party. We have a lot of big spenders in the Republican Party as well. And I ran, again, because of Obamacare, which I knew would not work. And it's not working. By the way, that's the problem with Medicaid right now is Obamacare is now called Medicaid expansion.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I just think they are overwhelmed. I mean, you see all the activity and this just hasn't hit his radar yet. It's going to hit his radar here this next the next few weeks. So, again, he liked the concept, the slogan of one beautiful bill. I don't think he was overly concerned or understanding what the details were. I'm going to force him to take a look at the details.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I'm going to force the discussion on spending.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
So we've been in finance committee. We've been working on these things. But again, it's all about scores, right? I've got to point this out. You hear these scores, right? But they're divorced from, they're not tied to anything. It's like, okay, I got a score of 65. Well, good. I mean, it's good if you're golfing. It's awful if you're bowling. So you get all these scores.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
They're divorced from reality. So again, the process is complete chaos. It's by and large a charade, okay? Somebody else is going to write this thing, and it's going to be shoved down people's throats. So what I intend to do is I intend to open it up and bring this to the light of day. I've been doing this since January 1st, writing about –
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
giving three pre-pandemic levels, three options on pre-pandemic levels of spending. Next column, here's the process, a line by line, deep dive, forensic audit. I'd love to take the Doge team right now and just bring them over. Let's focus on this. Let's spend months doing this, but we'll need time. We'll need a two-step process.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
And then literally my last column just kind of put it all together, the big numbers, and this is why you have to do it. But again, you were following the debate in the House. Did you ever hear $2.2 trillion average deficit being projected, $22 trillion, $59 trillion in debt? Nobody. It's just $1.5 trillion. Oh, that's a lot. It's almost meaningless. It's a rounding error.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
So I'm going to force this debate. That's why I'm on your show here today. That's why I'm going to be doing Jake Tapper tomorrow. I'm going to bring the numbers to the fore.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I've been pretty upfront. The first goal of this Republican budget reconciliation should be don't add to the deficit. That ought to be the first goal. Beyond that, what I've always said is I want a commitment to return to a reasonable pre-pandemic level spending and a process to achieve and maintain it. I'm reasonably open. I recognize we have to get the votes. So I don't have a hard number.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
But what I've done is I've laid out these options. And right now, the hard number accepted by and expected by a lot of senators, enough to not pass this until we achieve it, is $6.5 trillion in spending in 2026. And I can walk through how you get to that point. But that's kind of the number right now. We're expected to spend about seven point three trillion next year.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
So that implies about eight hundred eight trillion dollars in deficit reduction rather than one point five trillion that the House has in their meager house reconciliation bill.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
But to answer your question, budget reconciliation was set up in the Budget Act, I think it was 1974. It doesn't work in terms of controlling spending. By the way, nothing ever has. We'll get into that in terms of we've never had a process for actually controlling spending. But it allows us to pass a budget and then to reconcile the budget. You're able to pass a budget.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
That's why I try and simplify things, okay? I'm focusing on spending. We went from 4.4 to it'll be 7.3 next year. Let's bring it down to a reasonable pre-pandemic level 6.5. Spending, spending, spending. I voted for President Trump because I wanted him to defeat the deep state. You don't defeat the deep state by continuing to fund it at Biden's levels.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
So the minute you start bringing in revenue, nobody can project that. Nobody knows exactly what the impact is going to be. So that starts muddying the waters. So I focus on spending. I don't really want to fund the deep state. OK, I would like to bring certainty to the economy. I'd like the trade wars to end so we can bring that level of stability. I don't want to increase taxes.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
So, again, my approach would be multiple step border defense, bank the savings, take whatever good work the House did, bank that. Extend current tax law as often, as complex as it is, just extend that. Increase the debt ceiling for a year to put pressure on us to come back and do the work on the spending. And then we can bring up President Trump's taxes as well.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I mean, I would keep this as simple as possible, get it passed, and start doing the work. That would be my approach.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I would say the only reason I'm not in a full-fledged panic is because people like Art Laffer do point out we have vast wealth. I mean, so our debt to GDP ratio is probably not the most relevant. It is relevant for inflation, that type of thing. But debt to total assets is probably the more relevant. So we literally can't afford this level of debt.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
But you do have to compare it to income as well and our ability to service the debt and the debt spiral. So again, this all ends up being a lot of different – factors coming into what's going to make it possible for people to live. And again, inflation is probably the one metric that we need to avoid. And I think that's the thing that I'm most concerned about in terms of deficit spending.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Our base is going to go, why did we elect you guys? You're really no better than Democrats. I don't think President Trump, he's not focused on reducing spending. This is our one opportunity. And right now we're blowing and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure we don't blow it. I can't be pressured by President Trump.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I'm not concerned about America going bankrupt because we have this vast wealth. I'm concerned about us being insolvent in sparking massive inflation and just wiping out people's savings, making it very impossible for them to live and retire.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Well, I'm highly concerned about just the conservative movement. I think Trump is a completely unique political figure. I think he definitely did drive turnout. He's expanded, you know, certainly our base, which, by the way, is one of the reasons I am sympathetic to what you're talking about in terms of the tax cuts he's proposed.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I mean, we need to focus on the working men and women of this country. It's really the Trump coalition. But I'm concerned about how effective Democrats are. The coalition they have made up of the media, primarily social media companies, that type of thing. Their relentlessness of letting all these undocumented people in this country who are voting.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I mean, we're starting to see that type of fraud that are. You know, they are trying to cheat. I think they do cheat in voting. I think we don't have a real feeling in terms of how, you know, the order of magnitude of their cheating. But a quick example of, you know, we had that important Supreme Court race here. Elon Musk came in here, did some pretty innovative things, spent a lot of money here.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
It's not a law, but you pass this budget with just 50 votes, 51 votes majority. And then you can reconcile to that budget, also avoiding the Senate filibuster. So that's the main component. What's weird about it is you pass this budget, but you can only, through budget reconciliation, address mandatory spending. You can't touch the discretionary spending accounts, which is about 25% of our budget.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
The liberal candidate got 78% of Kamala Harris's vote. The conservative candidate got 62% of Donald Trump's vote. Even though we were all out there saying how important this is, if you don't want to see President Trump impeached by a Democrat-controlled Congress in the next Congress, you got to get out and support President Trump. That didn't resonate.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Again, 78% of Democrats came out, 62% of Republicans.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
No, I think the greatest danger at MAGA is it's really tied toward one individual. You know, Tea Party movement was tied toward the vision of America, freedom, you know, debt and deficit, not mortgage, our kids' future. I think that survived. I mean, they did a pretty good job of marginalizing Tea Party, but we're alive and well. We are the House Freedom Caucus.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
We're the people that are gonna stop this until we just get a much better bill in the Senate. So we're still alive and well, but in terms of voters, I mean, the Tea Party pretty well merged with Republican Party. I'm not sure all the mega voters are just disgusted by the whole process, as am I. And they're much more likely to sit on the couch unless their guy is on the ballot.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
No, I'm not sure you are off at all. No, I think we may have already passed that hinge point. That's my concern. I mean, people ask me, are you optimistic? No, I'm a pessimist. I'm looking around. That is the death knell of a democracy or a republic when a majority of the voters realize, hey, I can vote myself benefits. Don't worry about the debt and deficit. We can print money.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Well, the data that backs us up is, and I wrote this in my Wall Street Journal column, 1930, the federal government spent about 3.5% of our GDP. 3.5. State and local governments were about 9.1. That was the foundational premise of America. Government close to government, where it's more effective, more efficient, more accountable. Now we're spending close to 24%, the federal level.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
States are probably somewhere 12 to 15, haven't looked that recent. And as Lord Acton pointed out, power corrupts. Government is power. That is really the definition of government is power. So it gets corrupted and it's been corrupted. And I don't know. You know, I fear we're past the point of no return. Why did I run again for a third term?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
That's one of the ways the budget has gotten completely out of control is we put so many things into the mandatory category. You know, initially it was entitled Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, but we have, I would say, deeply slid all kinds of discretionary spending into other mandatory that really exploded during COVID, where I think other mandatory hit well over $2 trillion.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
As disgusted as I am in this process, I couldn't turn my back on this country. I can't give up on it. I'm not overly optimistic. And again, it's not just the as government grows, your freedom recedes. As government grows, you get more and more people dependent on it. Well, that's right. And they're not doing things productive. You don't have a vibrant economy.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I think Rand Paul is pretty much a hard no, regardless. Now, again, I don't think you get a good enough bill where he'd vote yes. My other allies for sure in this thing are Mike Lee and Rick Scott. Each one of us has our own thoughts, may accept something different than the others. I'm pretty well dug in, but I'm reasonable. You give me something that
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
like I say, commits to getting to a pre-pandemic global spending and a process to achieve and maintain it, I'll work with you.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Now, one of the things I did, and we had it pinned to my top of my X page, I think it's further on down now, but I put together a video about a minute 30, starting with President Trump and State of the Union saying he was gonna balance the federal budget and then the vice president and everybody on down some version of, we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
At the very end of the video, I asked, so are we willing to fix it? Right now, it doesn't appear we are, but I tend to insist that we do. So I'm going to dig my heels in. There's nothing that President Trump can do to pressure me. other than start work with me, acknowledge the numbers.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I'm texting, they're probably annoyed with me, Bessent and Hassett and Russell all the time, saying, here's my viewpoint. What am I not getting right? So they know exactly what I'm thinking. They know exactly my concerns. They know exactly the numbers. I had a nice lunch with Scott Besson in the Treasury Department. I gave him my charts and graphs, all that kind of stuff.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
He asked for the electronic version of those so he could distribute those to the Treasury Department. So none of this should come as any surprise to anybody. And again, the ace I hold is I am going to force the numbers that we have to look at out in the public. To this point, we haven't discussed it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I first focused on spending.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
89.3 trillion, again, that represents government, right? That represents that power that's been corrupted. That represents the just unprecedented, other than World War II, increase in spending from 2019 of 58 to 60%. So if you can't deal with that,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
In my column, I pointed out our forefathers, the greatest generation, responsible leadership, entered World War II spending about 11.7 percent, ramped it up to 41 percent during the war. By 1948, they were down to 11.4 percent. So it's entirely possible, but you need leadership. I need the president of the United States. By the way, I've been in the White House with him.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I've shown him my charts and graphs. He goes, I love this. I love this. The House ought to love this. Has this been presented? No, Mr. President, let's go to the House, let's present this. He didn't do that. We need President Trump to embrace The reality that we are spending way too much money. He was elected to defeat the D state. You don't defeat it spending it by his levels.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Last fiscal year is about $1.3 trillion. This year will be over a trillion. So it went from about $642 billion in 2019, other mandatory, again, not Social Security, Medicare, even Medicaid, Went from 642 to last year, 1.3. This year, it's going to be over a trillion dollars and it's going to keep pretty much at that level as far as the eye can see.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
He needs to see the detail. Again, I think, you know, to be charitable, I think he's been so busy doing so many other wonderful things that I support. He hasn't focused on this. I'm going to force him to focus on this.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Yeah, and again, I don't think the numbers are that complicated. It's like about $22 trillion of additional deficit spending. That's a rosy scenario. That's $2.2 trillion per year. Obama, he averaged about $900 billion in your deficit. Trump, before the pandemic, was about $800 billion. But Biden's up to almost $1.9 trillion average deficit. Clearly unsustainable.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
We got to get back to a reasonable level. And by the way, if we do, I think the bond markets would rejoice. We wouldn't be looking at a ramping up of interest costs. We can talk about debt to wealth as opposed to debt to GDP because we've got that monkey off our back.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
And we also have to focus on economic growth through the private sector, not fueled by government deficit spending. I mean, I don't know what percent of our actual growth came from $2 trillion a year deficits. I think a pretty good chunk. So have we really had real private sector growth?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I think we have, but not as much as I think the headline numbers because so much of it has been fueled by the government. By the way, that's also true in terms of revenue coming from the government. It is true that we beat the CBO estimates. But that's because of trillions of dollars of deficit spending starting the pandemic years followed through with Biden.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Prior to the pandemic, we really weren't matching even the CBO's downgrade of revenue coming in after the TCGA. We weren't hitting it. But then he had COVID hit and, again, trillions of dollars of deficit spending that also boosted revenue. So, again, all these people saying, oh, we're going to, you know, that tax increase is going to be dynamically scored and it's going to pay for itself.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
So again, that's a trillion dollars of other non-entitlement spending that we never looked at. And that's the whole point about mandatory spending. It's never looked at. So anyway, so we can address mandatory spending, not Social Security, through this reconciliation process, change programs, do whatever we want to do, as long as it has a primarily budgetary impact, not changing policy.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Listen, I'm all for dynamic scoring, but let's be realistic. And again, I'll point out the CBO projection I'm dealing with, $22 trillion, that assumes we go from 17.1% to 18% of GDP in terms of revenue. So, you know, if we don't cancel the tax increase and there's dynamic scoring effects, it just means we don't hit 18.1 and that number is still lower.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
That's why I'm not an optimist. But, you know, I've heard people rationalize this. And I mean, important people rationalize, you know, just go along with this. Get us a patent. I mean, this is what we have to do to win the majority, maintain the majority in the House in 2027, right? What good is a majority if you literally don't solve the problems that you're aware of?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Oh, so when we have the majority in 2027, then we're going to actually turn the spending curve down. That's when we're going to return to pre-pandemic level spending. I don't buy it. This is our one opportunity. And right now we're blowing it. And I'm going to do everything I can to make sure we don't blow it. But again, that is the reality. And listen, I don't discount the fact.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
that we may lose the House, we may lose the Senate. But I would say we do that because we're not solving these problems. We're going to be looked at as unserious. Our base is going to go, why did we elect you guys? You didn't take the bull by the horns. You didn't solve this problem. You're really no better than Democrats. I think we have to be concerned about that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
they will achieve and maintain a pre-pandemic level of spending, just a lower spending level. I come from a manufacturing base, right? You can't have a good product without a good process. And we've just never had that process. So the only one I can think of is what Doge has demonstrated does work in terms of getting the public supporting Us in terms of limiting just awful spending.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
So you got to expose it. You got to go line by line. Again, there are thousands of lines, just top lines in the federal budget, hundreds, thousands of lines under each one of those as well. So you have to do the work. And again, I would love to take that Doge team, you know, those geniuses with all their AI and their computer skills.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
and get 100, 200 forensic auditors and just go through this line by line. And again, my proposal was having this budget review panel, senators, House members, members of the administration, OMB. Then you basically set up the process just like you do in a business. Here's your budget review sheet.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Then you bring the department heads, their financial gurus in front of this budget review panel, just justify your spending. But again, I would be comparing it to outlays under Clinton plused up, outlays under Obama plused up, outlays under Trump plused up. Go through every line and go, first of all, why are you spending more than even Trump? Why are you spending more than Obama or Clinton?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Plus, why are you spending any money at all on this? But you have to go through the work so you need the time. I've been proposing this now for months. Nobody's put in the effort. OMB said we don't have enough time. And I realize they're busy. The House said, we've been working on this for a year. We're satisfied with our numbers. We didn't have the time.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
So you can change policy as long as it has a budgetary impact. I know that's reasonably complex, but it's an insane system and it doesn't work.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
The Senate, really, the Senate leadership is the only one that's been fully behind what I'm trying to do here. But we can't do it alone. I mean, I can't do it. I don't have the budget expertise. So it literally is it's getting the commitment of the president.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
that he is determined to not keep funding the deep state at buying levels, return to a reasonable pre-pandemic level of spending, and then get his OMB fully behind this effort. This has got to be the biggest effort on budget ever. And then set the thing up, show it works, and then hopefully maintain it over the years. I can't think of anything. We've tried all this other stuff. It never worked.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I appreciate you having me on. I will say one thing that is different about me than others. I'd rather go home. That's a significant difference. When you'd rather, I'd rather return to my private sector life than keep serving here in this total dysfunction. That is what, again, I can't be pressured by President Trump. I can't.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I mean, he's not going to flip me just by the force of his argument or any kind of political pressure. There's no pressure he can apply to me. He's willing to sit down with me, look at the numbers, acknowledge them, working forward in a reasonable plan forward. That's the only way he's going to get my support.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Well, right now we don't really have them. Again, let's just go through why we've never had a process to control spending. We don't have a balanced budget requirement like states do. And we have the capability of printing money, which we're doing, incurring this enormous debt. So we don't have a balanced budget requirement. I didn't realize this until just recently.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
The appropriation committees were literally set up because the authorized committees were big spenders. So they set up appropriation committees to control spending. That didn't work. The Budget Act didn't work. Simpson-Bowles didn't work. The Budget Control Act didn't work. It did restrain discretionary spending for a couple of years until we wheezed our way around.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
He's willing to sit down with me, look at the numbers, acknowledge them, working forward in a reasonable plan forward. That's the only way he's going to get my support.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
So again, we've never had a process to control spending. And one of the things I've been arguing in some Wall Street Journal columns is let's use the example of Doge. I come with the private sector. We probably spent more time reviewing my line by line budget for my business.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
And I think other private sector businesses spend more time analyzing what they're going to spend than Congress spends over the entire federal budget. So we've got to develop a process. Doge has shown us how to do it. Go contract by contract. Expose the grotesque waste, fraud, and abuse. But we've got to do that through thousands of lines through the federal budget. But nobody's willing to do it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Nobody's willing to take the time to do the work to do it. They're doing what they've always done. They exempt most spending. They look at a couple of programs, they try and tweak them, try and get a big score out of CBO so they can say, hey, look, we saved $1.5 trillion, and yet that's completely divorced from reality.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
$1.5 trillion sounds like a lot, but over 10 years, it's $150 billion against a $7,000 billion a year budget that only six years ago was $4,400 billion. If I've got one complaint in terms of the process in the House, It's basically a void of reality.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
We're not talking about the numbers we should be talking about, which is a 10-year deficit projected by CBO of $22 trillion, averaging $2.2 trillion a year. We don't talk about it. Instead, we focus all on $1.5 trillion, and then they're patting themselves on the back that they didn't even achieve $1.5 trillion.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
That understates it. Now, they'll talk about dynamic scoring, and I believe in dynamic scoring as well. But in this case, if you take a look at the tax cuts that President Trump is proposing, they're not going to generate growth. They're just going to reduce the deficit. The CBO projection I'm looking at assumes we're going to gain another $4 trillion from increasing taxes.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
So again, we may not get that $4 trillion, but no matter what, the CBO projection right now that is adding another $22 trillion to our debt, it certainly would add at least that. I would argue it'd probably add another $3 or $4 trillion. So it's not going to be $59 trillion. It's going to be more like $62, $63 trillion.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
And I would agree the current CBO projection, that's what I'm talking about here, You know, going from 37 to 59 trillion dollars in debt is a rosy is, you know, the rosy scenario that that's as good as we're going to do. So we're simply we're simply this does not mean the moment in terms of what we have to do.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
It covers the entire gamut of federal spending, education, welfare, food stamps, veterans benefits. Again, they've just transferred that into mandatory spending. So it's completely... out of sight, out of mind, and unaccountable.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Well, discretionary is actually supposedly passed each year through an appropriation process, which is completely broken. We don't pass individual appropriation bills. We generally at best, which is awful, minibuses or omnibuses. These are these multi-thousand page bills. bills that get dropped on our desk and we have to vote on them literally within 24 to 48 hours. Nobody reads them.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Nobody knows what's in them. That process is pretty broken down right now. We are operating for this fiscal year under a continuing resolution, which tweaks a few things, but it's basically spending at last year's levels on all those appropriated accounts. So again, that's about 25% of our budget. Then 75% is in the mandatory accounts, the entitlements and just other mandatory spending.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
Well, let me give you an example from about three years ago. This was after COVID, and bipartisan bases were on a massive spending spree in 2020, but then the Biden administration just continued that. So, you know, we were in omnibus spending debate. And for the first time, even though the Republican Senate conference, we have a resolution against earmarks.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
McConnell is negotiating an omnibus spending bill. And all of a sudden, members are sucking down earmarks. So I asked my colleagues at that time, I said, hey, anybody know how much in total we spent last year in the federal government? Room was dead silent. I went out to Washington Press Corps, asked the same question. Hey, anybody know how much we spent last year?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
One reporter said it was over a trillion dollars. No, that's just discretionary spending. The answer was something like $6.3 trillion. Because we had gone from $4.4 trillion in 2019 up to $6.5 trillion. And we've never looked back. And the analogy I use is no family, if they had an illness, borrowed $50,000, pay medical bills.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
If they got well the next year, they wouldn't keep borrowing $50,000 to spend at that level. But that's exactly what we've done. But the point of my story was nobody knew in total how much we spend because we never even talk about it. I mean, talk about. So that's out of sight, out of mind. So it's completely out of control.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I mean, I am the guys, you know, starting with my Wall Street Journal column January 1st about return to a pre-pandemic, pre-pandemic global spending. I mean, I've been hammering the Senate Republican conference on a weekly basis. Just, you know, ad nauseum, quite honestly. But what's the pushback? What do they say? They just throw they throw in the towel. Well, it's too hard.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I mean, that's unrealistic. You just can't do it, even though I lay out. So let me just tell you how I laid out my pre-pandemic levels of spending. This is between Christmas and New Year's. I'm trying to figure out how can I communicate this? How can I justify this? What kind of control can we put on things? So I literally went back in history.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
I went back to Clinton in 1998, Obama in 2014, and Trump in 2019. And I exempted Social Security, Medicare, and interest. You know, spend what we need to spend. But all other actual outlays in those three years, I increased them by inflation and population. You know, reasonable control, right? It's what we should have. We don't have a balanced budget amendment.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
At least we should have some reasonable control over outlays. Population growth inflation would make sense.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
First of all, by my calculation, our average interest rate over the last 50 years on government debt is about 5.8%. So that's 50 years. And we're down here about three, somewhere around 3%. Those are not exact calculations. Listen, that is the hope of all of us. I mean, I will absolutely agree that the number one
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
component of a solution to our enormous debt and deficit problem is economic growth we have to grow the economy but here's the problem is when the government is sucking out of the private sector all you know we're the ones borrowing the money so there's not a whole lot of money left for businesses in the private sector not enough capital there now you can print more money uh
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
But then that sparks inflation. And that, of course, erodes everybody's balance sheet. It also makes our debt less expensive as well. But because we're so in debt, that drives up the interest rates. And again, it ends up being a death and debt spiral. So nobody can predict this.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Senator Ron Johnson on the Senate showdown over Trump's Big Beautiful Bill | All-In Interview
But I mean, that's just the wishful thinking of people putting forward a policy, one big, beautiful bill that doesn't live up to its name, but actually exacerbates the problem.