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When it comes to the nation’s federal government, GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is “not a fan.”
He believes that it “causes or exacerbates more problems than it actually solves,” telling Fox News Digital during an interview on Wednesday that the bulk of his oversight is “to expose how awful government is” in order to obtain “public support for reducing it, limiting its size, limiting its cost, limiting its influence over our lives.”
“As our federal government grows, our freedoms recede,” he said. “You see what the federal government does, how it wastes money.”
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Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., arrives for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Thursday, April 3, 2025. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
The national debt has ballooned to the eye-watering sum of more than $36 trillion, with lawmakers and presidents from both parties presiding over the deficit spending that has led the nation to this point.
Johnson said he’s “trying to force reality” upon everyone in the nation’s capital, regardless of whether they want to face that reality.
He said for decades the nation has been suffering a “chronic debt crisis,” illustrating the dramatic decline in the value of the U.S. dollar by noting that “the dollar you held back in 1998 is now only worth $0.51 cents,” while “a dollar you held in … 2019 is only worth $0.80 cents.”
The senator referred to inflation as “the silent tax.”
But he’s certainly not staying silent.
Johnson indicated that the elected leaders are mortgaging the future of American children, but “don’t talk about it.”
“I’m forcing everybody to look at it,” he said, noting that his “primary role” is to force “acknowledgment of our problem.”
A burning US dollar bill, London, 8th August 2011. (Tom Stoddart/Getty Images)
But as keenly as Johnson advocates the idea of slashing the sprawling tentacles of the massive federal bureaucracy, right now he’s just pushing to pare spending down to pre-pandemic levels.
The conservative fiscal hawk has been making headlines for taking a stand against the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act that cleared the GOP-controlled House of Representatives last month.
But Johnson told Fox News Digital that he actually likes a lot of the measure.
“I’m really not critical of the bill as far as it goes,” Johnson explained, noting that he’s a “big supporter” of much of what’s in it, though he noted that has not read all of it — the measure is more than 1,000 pages long.
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“My main beef is it just doesn’t go far enough,” he said, noting that after the COVID-19 pandemic Democrats failed to return to pre-COVID spending and deficit levels.
The Congressional Budget Office’s estimated budgetary impact for the measure indicates that the net effect on the deficit would be a more than $2.4 trillion increase over the fiscal years 2025-2034.
But White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought has said the measure would decrease deficits.
“The bill REDUCES deficits by $1.4 trillion over ten years when you adjust for CBO’s one big gimmick–not using a realistic current policy baseline. It includes $1.7 trillion in mandatory savings, the most in history. If you care about deficits and debt, this bill dramatically improves the fiscal picture,” Vought said in a post on X.
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Johnson also noted during the interview that there has not been a “reckoning” regarding the “abuse” at all levels of government during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He noted that he does not refer to the COVID-19 jab as a vaccine. Instead, he referred to it as an “injection,” asserting that it is “not a vaccine,” and that it caused injuries and death.
The senator said that he thinks the shots should have “black box warnings.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website states that the “CDC recommends a 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccine for most adults ages 18 and older” and claims that the “vaccine helps protect you from severe illness, hospitalization, and death.”
Johnson isn’t necessarily interested in another term in office. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
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Johnson, who has served in the Senate since 2011 and won election to a third term in 2022, said he’d prefer not to seek another term in office.
“I don’t covet this job,” he said, noting that he wants to leverage his post to help save America and aid those who are “ignored by the system.”
While he’s not ruling out another run, Johnson, who turned 70-years-old earlier this year, said he’d “be happy” to return to Oshkosh and “live a nice, peaceful life.”
