Sen. Ron Johnson tears into White House’s ‘misleading’ claims about the true cost of Trump’s ‘big beautiful’ bill

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a former accountant, unveiled a detailed analysis of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and concluded that the Republican-backed measure will blow up the deficit — despite opposite claims coming from the White House about its budgetary effects.

Johnson’s 31-page analysis ran through multiple projections of the tax-and-spending megabill’s impact before accusing the White House of “misleading” budgeting tricks to paint a rosier picture of the marquee agenda package.

The deficit will increase by a whopping $24.1 trillion over the next 10 years and at least $3 trillion of that would come from the GOP’s bill, according to the analysis which cites the Congressional Budget Office’s scoring of the legislation.

His analysis also ripped into a recent White House memo suggesting that there are plans to slash the deficit by $6.7 trillion to $6.9 over the next 10 years through tariff revenue and discretionary spending cuts.

In reality, he found the best-case scenario would see a $2.5 trillion reduction over the next 10 years to the “current law” baseline from those policies.

But he later cautioned that the best-case scenario isn’t even likely because Democrats will almost certainly challenge the planned discretionary cuts and the courts may shut down President Trump’s tariffs.

“It’s my humble attempt not being a professional economist, to just lay out what we ought to be looking at,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday. “The kind of information we ought to be analyzing as we move forward to pass a very consequential, massive piece of legislation.”

The Badger State senator gave his analysis to the Trump’s economic adviser Kevin Hassett last week to give the Trump administration a chance to spot any errors in his analysis.

“I hope this report sparks the debate,” Johnson told reporters. “I hope this report causes other economists to bring forward their scenarios, because right now, but all we rely on is that the black hole of the CBO.”

The Wisconsin senator, who has opposed the House-passed version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in its current form due to its deficit impact, hinted that he is flexible on a lot of the details of the legislative but needs it to get “spending under control.”

His report noted that there is a “legitimate criticism” of the CBO’s scoring in that it is premised on 1.8% gross domestic product growth, when the average between 2000 to 2024 was 2.21%.

But the analysis also tore into well-worn Republican claims that the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act paid for itself after adjusting for pandemic-induced inflation.

“The claim that the TCJA paid for itself in seven years is hard to support,” the report stated bluntly.

A central component of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is that it renews and makes permanent key provisions within the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Johnson stressed that he doesn’t “want to increase taxes,” which is what will happen if the key provisions of the 2017 cuts are allowed to expire at the end of the year, but stressed that Republicans need to do more to curb spending.

One potential remedy Johnson suggested is for Congress to conduct a forensic audit of government outlays, something that would have more teeth to cut spending than the current iteration of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The senator also beliefs that the Fourth of July time frame to get the One Big Beautiful Bill Act across the finish line in the Senate isn’t realistic and would like to see Republicans attempt other reconciliation bills to rein in spending further.

He also predicted that the megabill will get voted down if it comes up in the Senate next week. Johnson is joined by at least three other fiscal hawks in the upper chamber who are concerned that the legislation doesn’t do enough to curb spending.

On Tuesday, the CBO released a new dynamic scoring estimate concluding that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would add $3.4 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years when accounting for its impact on economic growth.

That’s higher than the $3 trillion it initially forecasted on a static basis, which doesn’t account for economic growth. Usually the CBO’s dynamic scoring projections find less deficit increases than statis estimates.

Johnson’s analysis used the CBO’s static project before it was conducted before the dynamic scoring was released.