Ron Johnson Presses OMB Nominee On Returning Federal Spending To 'A Pre-Pandemic Level'

4/7/2025

During a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on Thursday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) spoke about returning federal spending to pre-pandemic levels.

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Transcript

00:00thank you. It's the standard practice of this committee for the chairman to ask

00:06the nominees the following question. Do you agree without reservation to comply

00:11with any request or summons to appear and testify before any duly

00:15constituted committee of Congress if you are confirmed? Mr. Cooper? Yes.

00:19Mr. Huland? I do. I'll reserve the remainder of my time and at this time

00:25recognize Senator Johnson. Thank you Mr. Chairman and thank both you gentlemen for

00:32your willingness to serve your nation in this aspect. Mr. Cooper, you're

00:37obviously from private sector and the private sector has certain disciplines.

00:42They have to balance a budget or they'll go bankrupt and then everybody

00:46lose their job but also in general should be at will employment. The federal

00:51government doesn't have to balance its budget which is why we're approaching

00:5437 trillion dollars in debt and by and large federal employees are immune from

01:01losing their job. So they don't show up for work and they expect they can still

01:05continue to be employed. So you want to just quick address the imbalance there

01:09and how that impacts the effectiveness of the federal government? Yes, thank you

01:13Senator. Look, I agree a foundational part of any organization ultimately is

01:17accountability as you're talking about and that requires managers obviously to

01:21provide feedback and to protect individuals but ultimately I do think

01:25you know we should look to a system where if people are performing quite

01:28frankly they should be rewarded and rewarded handsomely and if people are

01:31not performing appropriately then we need to find ways in which for them to

01:34find opportunities elsewhere. Mr. Huland, about three years ago we were engaged in

01:39an omnibus spending debate and I asked my colleagues as well as the Washington

01:42Press Corps, anybody know how much we spent last year? Nobody answered. I did

01:48get one answer from the press was like over a trillion dollars. Okay that's

01:51that's discretionary spending which is approximately 25% of total spending. The

01:56other 75% is mandatory and we never look at it. We've gone from 4.4 trillion

02:03dollars in 2019 to probably about 7.3 trillion this year. Completely out of

02:10control. 63% increase, our population is growing 2.6%. I think you're well aware

02:14of the different pre-pandemic spending options I've laid on the table. What I

02:19want to talk about is a process for returning to a pre-pandemic level. We've

02:26never had a process to control federal spending. I wasn't aware of the fact the

02:32appropriation committees were initially established because of the authorizing

02:36committees were big spenders. Well that didn't work. The Budget Act didn't work.

02:41Simpson-Bowles didn't work. The Budget Control Act did restrain discretionary

02:46spending for a couple years but we weaseled around that. So you know I

02:50proposed a bicameral panel, Senators, House members working with OMB, to do

02:57something the private sector does all the time. A budget review meeting and go

03:02through the 2,400 individual lines of expenditures and ask the administration

03:08to justify the spending. Compare that against for example fully inflated 2019

03:13spending or 2014 under Obama or 1998 under Clinton. So again you've got a lot

03:19of experience. You've seen to what extent the administration looks at the detail.

03:26We don't. Again Congress doesn't even consider 75% of the budget and I would

03:32argue the 25% we do is not done in a particularly professional manner. It's

03:36pretty much well what do we spend last year? We're gonna increase 2, 3, 4 percent

03:41and then pat ourselves on the back I guess when we don't increase it. Wow by

03:44the way we're we're sliding discretionary spending into other

03:47mandatory. We've gone from 642 billion dollars in other mandatory not

03:51Social Security, Medicare, even Medicaid. 642 billion dollars of other mandatory to

03:561.3 trillion this year. So again with short time remaining talk to me about

04:02how we can develop a process like the private sector to go line by line through

04:08the federal budget cooperatively. The administration with Congress so that the

04:13end result is something we can all embrace. I appreciate your question

04:17Senator and absolutely we've discussed this before and I know you've had a

04:21chance to discuss this both with the president and the director and the

04:24deputy director. As you know OMB under the director and deputy director are

04:29going through this line by line evaluation against a rubric of the

04:34president's campaign commitments but as well and working to engage with you and

04:39other members of the Senate and the House about where matters stand,

04:43potential alternatives, share information and ideas ultimately to your point to

04:49ensure that to the maximum extent possible we are as unified as possible

04:54on the budget path and trajectory going forward. To your point about the amount

05:00of money being spent, one of the challenges as you know that has

05:05oftentimes not been as easily noticed by the press is how much of that spending

05:10is obligatory interest payment on the federal debt. Which is something again

05:15when you join the Senate was much lower around a hundred billion dollars a year

05:20and now is a trillion dollars a year. It exceeds almost any other domestic

05:25discretionary aggregate big spends including the Department of Defense and

05:29Labor and HHS. So we have a challenge for the 36 trillion dollars of debt that we

05:38already owe which isn't by the way as you know better than most not the full

05:44debt just the public debt. The debt that we owe to ourselves you add that on top

05:48we're at nearly 45 trillion dollars and so being very methodical, very careful,

05:53very clear about where to go is something that I hope there is both

05:59ends of Pennsylvania Avenue's ability to engage and work through. So I guess

06:03I'm just asking for a commitment to continue to work with us on developing

06:07process that actually achieves a pre-pandemic level spending. Will you do

06:12that? Absolutely happy to commit to the process and again I know you've

06:16discussed directly with Director Vote ideas about the best way to engage in

06:21that conversation. Thank you both. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Senator Peters.

Ron Johnson Presses OMB Nominee On Returning Federal Spending To 'A Pre-Pandemic Level'

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