Sen. Johnson criticizes colleagues in Congress on government spending, says they don't like numbers

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., criticized colleagues in Congress on Wednesday for out-of-control government spending, adding that they aren't big fans of numbers.

"We got a bunch of lawyers in Congress," Johnson said on the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "I found that my colleagues don't like numbers that much."

Johnson has been one of the Republicans in the Senate opposed to President Donald Trump's "big beautiful bill" that passed the House last month.

One of his main concerns is how much it will potentially increase the deficit.

"We are in a very dangerous zone in terms of locking in deficits of over two trillion over the next 10 years," Johnson said. 

A solution he offered was to go back to pre-pandemic level spending. 

"The first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one and then properly defining it," Johnson said. "So I'm trying to properly define it: lay out different scenarios [and] show that economic growth is a huge component of a solution. But we're not going to get to a balanced budget by just growing the economy. We have got to reduce spending to a pre-pandemic level."