HouseSpeaker Johnson downplays deficit concerns over House budget bill

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HouseSpeaker Johnson downplays deficit concerns over House budget bill

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks to a reporter, as he leaves for a meeting at the White House on the budget, on the day of the House Rules Committee’s hearing on U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for extensive tax cuts, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 21, 2025.

Nathan Howard | Reuters

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday hailed the passage of the “big, beautiful bill” as the “largest cut in spending in at least 30 years, and arguably of all time,” while dismissing concerns that the package will raise federal deficits.

A recent

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from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that the tax provisions in the sweeping package could increase the deficit by $3.8 trillion over the next decade.

Republican senators, including fiscal hawks like Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, have balked at the House bill over concerns about soaring deficits and signaled plans to change it.

But Speaker Johnson rejected the CBO analysis and others forecasting sharply higher deficits, calling them “dramatically overstated.”

He said the bill “will really get the economy going, because wages will rise, job creators, entrepreneurs, risk takers, will have more ability to expand their businesses, U.S. manufacturing onshore is being incentivized.”

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“All these things will work together to make the economy grow faster than most of any of these projections are putting forth, so we’re not buying it,” Johnson said on CNN’s ‘State of the Union.”

Major indexes fell Wednesday after the House passed the package amid worry the spending bill will lead to increasing federal deficits.

The multitrillion-dollar tax cut and spending package narrowly passed the House last week, after a marathon debate and pressure from President Donald Trump to move the package through.

Trump visited Capitol Hill and urged House Republicans to back the bill. The package now sits before the Senate, where Republican lawmakers have already said they will make changes.

Speaker Johnson said that he urged Senate Republicans to make “as few modifications to the package as possible.”

“We’ve got to pass it one more time to ratify their changes in the House, and I have a very delicate balance here, a very delicate equilibrium that we’ve reached over a long ******* of time, and it’s best not meddle with it too much,” Johnson said.

House Republicans hold a narrow majority, meaning the speaker can only afford to lose a handful of votes and still get the measure through on a party-line vote.

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