“We are extending the debt cap and showing creditors, bond markets and stock markets that Congress is serious about this,” the House Speaker said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the budget bill approved by President Donald Trump, passed in the House last week, would not lead to an increase in government spending.
Johnson opposed the statement, saying that passing the bill was “very important” and that the measure was in fact “the greatest spending cut in the history of government on Earth.”
“That doesn’t mean we’re going to spend more money,” he said. “We are extending the creditors cap to show creditors, bond markets and stock markets that Congress is serious about this.”
Johnson said he agreed to Paul’s points about national debt.
“National debt… is the biggest threat to our national security, and the deficit is a serious issue,” the House Speaker said. “What I think Rand lacks in this is the fact that we are very serious about this. This is the biggest spending cut in over 30 years. We cut over $1.5 trillion in spending, which is a huge leap.”
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The package is the GOP’s commitment to extending the roughly $4.5 trillion tax credits implemented during Trump’s first term in 2017, temporarily adding new ones that campaigned during the 2024 campaign.
Trump visited House Republicans at last week’s conference session and urged action to hold holdouts with GOP leaders for a lengthy session at the White House on May 21. Before the vote, the administration warned in a pointed statement that failing to pass it would be “the ultimate betrayal.”
After the legislation passed, Trump posted on social media: “Thank you to all the Republicans who voted in favor of this historic bill. It’s time for friends in the United States Senate to get into work.”
Johnson pointed out on May 25th that some cuts may not be as deep as some people hoped.
“That’s not all right now? Of course it’s not,” he told Fox News. “But we have a very delicate balance and we need to start the process. We compare this to an aircraft carrier. You don’t make an aircraft carrier a single dime. It requires a mile of open ocean. So it took decades to get to this situation.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
