In the weeks leading up to the Senate’s reconciliation vote, congressional reporters were all looking for a quote from the same Republican senator.
At least, it seemed that way when dozens of journalists regularly flocked to Sen. Ron Johnson in the Senate basement, tripping over themselves to position the business end of their recorders toward Johnson’s mouth.
Most had variations of the same question: Will you vote for Donald Trump’s legislative agenda? Is the $3.9 trillion price tag too much for you to swallow?
There was plenty of reason to ask these questions. In May, Johnson had penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, “The Ugly Truth About the ‘Big Beautiful Bill.’”
But for all the intrigue that the Wisconsin conservative generated around himself by responding to reporter questions with cryptic retorts like calling the price “a big ol’ grenade” and withholding his support until the final days, Johnson’s ultimate answer turned out to be a simple one: “Yes.”
Johnson, along with just about every other so-called “fiscal hawk” in the Senate, voted for the sweeping, 900-page reconciliation bill last week. Now, Johnson and his fellow fiscal hawk holdouts — like Sens. Rick Scott and Cynthia Lummis — are justifying their flip-flops on the bill to those same reporters and, in some cases, themselves.
“One of the reasons I decided to vote for this is I didn’t want the bill to get more expensive,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday. “I wasn’t asking for money for my vote. I was asking for nothing other than a commitment to reduce the deficit.”
Johnson said he achieved that commitment, securing promises from Trump and GOP leaders that Congress would pursue “another bite at the apple” in the form of a second reconciliation bill next fiscal year that targets spending cuts.
“I definitely had to vote ‘yes,’ or I would have just dealt myself out of being involved in that process,” Johnson said. “And I want to be highly involved.”
Congress is a long way from crafting a second reconciliation bill — let alone passing it before the 2026 midterms. The first bite at the apple is landing with a thud in early polls, and Senate leaders are hardly conveying much of an appetite to revisit the most unpopular elements of their first reconciliation bill.
Still, Johnson was resolute that his vote last week would help him cultivate key political capital down the line. In any case, he said, “the major parts of that bill had to be done,” referencing the extension to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that would have expired this year.
But Johnson said he was frustrated with deeper tax cuts in the bill and the artificial timeline imposed on senators to create a false sense of urgency before July 4.
“Once it all came together, I wasn’t happy with how we rushed it,” he said. “I wasn’t happy with a lot of the tax credits, new tax credits — I don’t want to increase taxes, but if we’re $37 trillion in debt, do we need to cut taxes more?”
“I’m not happy with all the things we threw in,” he added. “We should have just made it pretty bare bones, minimize the deficit impact. But again, recognize that we actually did do some reform to Medicaid,” referencing the $1 trillion cut to the program.
But conservatives had actually been eying more significant cuts to Medicaid.
Before they delivered the deciding votes to advance the reconciliation bill, Johnson, Lummis, Scott and Rand Paul met with Majority Leader John Thune to flex their muscles. But the only deliverable after the meeting was a potential amendment vote to reduce the federal government’s share of state Medicaid costs.
The amendment, which would have cut an additional $313 billion from Medicaid, never actually reached the floor.
Still, every other fiscal conservative besides Paul voted for the final product. On Tuesday, Lummis told NOTUS she hadn’t entirely come to terms with her decision.
“I’m still not comfortable that I voted for it,” she said.
She complained that the bill spent “too much money” without “addressing the debt,” adding a verbal “period” at the end of her grievances for emphasis.
But, Lummis continued, “We didn’t have a choice. You know it was a vote to extend the tax cuts or have them expire, which would have had a huge tax increase.”
There was, of course, a choice. Concerned lawmakers could have held out longer to pressure more cost-saving initiatives in the bill. If conservatives stuck together, leaders would have been forced to find more savings.
But that would have run into problems with moderate lawmakers who were already concerned about the deep cuts to Medicaid. And Senate GOP leaders conveyed to conservatives that “there would be future opportunities to address” the deficit.
“Anytime there’s a reconciliation, there’s an opportunity to address it. So I hope that that opportunity will arise,” Lummis said, though she was clear there were “no promises, none, nothing” related to a second reconciliation bill.
It is clear that Republicans who voted for the reconciliation bill did get something. They spared themselves the wrath of Trump, who lambasted Sen. Thom Tillis for voting against the bill. And they won the adoration of the president’s many fans in their red states.
Lummis said her Wyoming constituents “loved” the bill. “It was very popular,” she said.
But there was another consequence of the fiscal hawks’ fold. They left Paul in a political no-man’s-land, vulnerable to criticism from Trump — who, indeed, posted that the “people of Kentucky can’t stand” their junior senator.
Paul was consistent about his worries regarding a $5 trillion debt ceiling hike, and, apparently, he was the only conservative willing to actually back up his concerns with his vote.
Asked if he wished his colleagues had backed him up, Paul offered NOTUS a curt, “Sure,” while declining to elaborate on the specifics of his conversations with the other fiscal hawks on reconciliation.
Scott, at least, didn’t show much regret.
“I wanted to support the president, so this was the only opportunity to do that,” he told NOTUS. “So that’s what I did.”
“I still believe we’ve got a lot of work to do to balance the budget,” Scott said.
As for whether that work will be addressed in another reconciliation bill, Scott struck an optimistic note.
“Hope springs eternal,” he said.