Senator Ron Johnson set the record straight after allegations of a ‘shouting match’ between him and a top Trump aide emerged from a Thursday afternoon meeting.
The Wisconsin Republican reportedly was involved in a ‘shouting match’ with Trump’s White House aide Stephen Miller over the border security funding number contained in the ‘big beautiful’ GOP spending bill currently being worked on in the Senate.
Johnson, a fiscal conservative who has voiced his concerns about the bill’s impact on the towering national debt, is a critical vote that the White House wants to secure.
The senator cleared the air to the Daily Mail via a statement from his press office Thursday.
He did not deny that the spat took place, but any hatchet that came out behind closed doors seemed to have been buried.
‘Stephen didn’t realize that we didn’t have the detailed breakdown in cost, so he explained why the wall was going to be more expensive. Simple misunderstanding, quickly resolved,’ Johnson noted.
‘We are all huge supporters of Stephen and providing the administration the funding they need to clean up the enormous mess created by Biden and the Democrats,’ Johnson added.
The impetus of the reported ‘shouting match’ was when Johnson said Miller’s border security numbers didn’t add up.
After the closed door meeting, Johnson told reporters that Miller’s justification for additional border funding was enough to convince him, adding ‘if anything, we maybe ought to need more’ funding.
In a May explainer published to his website titled ‘The Ugly Truth About the ‘Big Beautiful Bill”, Johnson outlined his opposition to the budget bill, primarily on the basis of the sheer cost of the proposed package.
The explainer was published on May 12th, before the House of Representatives passed their version of the spending bill just before the Memorial Day recess.
‘There’s nothing now to justify this abnormal level of government spending. Pathetically, Congress is having a hard time agreeing on a reduction of even $1.5 trillion from that 10-year amount,’ Johnson noted at the time.
The Wisconsin senator isn’t the only one opposed to the eye-popping cost of the House spending package.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has shared opposition to the legislation as well, due to the projected new additions to the national debt.
While he wants to see the President’s 2017 tax cuts extended, Paul has portrayed the current $5 trillion in new debt as ‘Biden spending levels.’
‘This will be the largest increase in the debt ceiling ever in our history,’ Paul told Fox News earlier this month. ‘I think it is a terrible idea to do this’ Paul told Fox News earlier in June.