Why Cutting Federal Spending to Pre-Pandemic Levels Is So Hard
Interest payments, Social Security and health care have driven most of the increase since February 2020, and there’s no will to address them.
Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin wants a return to pre-pandemic spending.
Photographer: Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg
“We have to return to a reasonable pre-pandemic level of spending,” says Republican US Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who doesn’t like the budget bill that passed in the House because it doesn’t reduce the $1.8 trillion federal deficit.
Given that the bill’s failure to reduce the deficit is due in part to its extension and expansion of the special tax treatment for non-corporate businesses that Johnson insisted on in 2017, which will cost an estimated $820 billion over the next decade, the senator does not make for the most credible of deficit hawks. But his suggestion of a return to pre-pandemic spending is intriguing.