WI Rep Steil pleased with progress on ‘big, beautiful bill,' but needs more

Wisconsin Congressman Bryan Steil is not far off from the state’s senior U.S. senator on President Donald Trump’s so-called big, beautiful bill.

Steil was on News Talk 1130 WISN on Thursday, and said he shares Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s worries that the federal reconciliation package doesn’t do enough to trim federal spending. But he said there is plenty in the package to like.

“When we are looking at a long-term structural deficit, where we are spending $2 trillion more than we're bringing in every year, rough math, we need dramatic and transformational change,” Steil said. “The bill in the House takes us a step in the right direction. So, it's progress. It's not as much progress as, overall, I think we need to do to fully get the country back on track.”

Johnson has said he can’t vote for the plan as it’s written now.

Steil wouldn’t go that far, saying with a slim Republican majority “every vote counts.”

Steil said the bill does get some things right in his opinion.

“It extends President Trump's tax cuts that really brought economic growth going into the recession. And makes real and substantive reforms, everything from canceling out electric vehicle subsidies, so that people can purchase a car or a bus that they want, or that the market tells you should, to making sure we have work requirements in our welfare programs for able-bodied childless adults,” Steil explained.

Democrats on Capitol Hill, and in Wisconsin, are portraying those work requirements at Medicaid cuts.

“Wisconsin Republicans like Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden have tried to save face by claiming that Wisconsinites’ Medicaid benefits ‘will not be cut by a nickel.’ Yet, the budget blueprint they voted for – calling for $2 trillion in cuts, including as much as $880 billion from Medicaid – makes it impossible for Medicaid to go untouched,” the Democratic Party of Wisconsin said in a statement.

Steil said Democrats are focused on the wrong thing when looking at Medicaid.

“And so what the Democrats want to focus on is how much money is going into the program. That's the Democrats play card time and again,” Steil added. “Instead us as Republicans, what we are looking at this, is saying ‘Let's look at the outputs.’ Let's, in particular, make sure if you have able-bodied childless adult of working age that they're working at a minimum of 20 hours a week.”