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Ron Johnson: “In 1998, we had a surplus.”

Featuring: Ron Johnson, Republican | U.S. Senate, Wisconsin

DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson

Published March 19, 2025 | Video Starts at 14:45

It's literally insane. So what I've done is I said, okay, we have to return to a reasonable pre pandemic level of spending. And so I went back and went to In 1998, we had a surplus. He spent $1.65 trillion back in 1998. Again, I don't think we spent too little back in 1998. Now, you increase that by population inflation. (14:45–14:52)

CLAIM

Asserts that the U.S. had a budget surplus in 1998.

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.

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Ron Johnson

“Chuck Schumer did not bring up one appropriation bill on the floor of the Senate [in the last Congress].”
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“The Appropriation Committee passed 11 of 12 [bills].”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 02:43-02:54
“74% of the budget now is just completely on automatic pilot.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 03:34-03:39
“It's about $1.9 trillion from last year.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 03:43-03:48
“We're going to spend about $7.3 trillion this year.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 05:40-05:44
“That's a 63% increase in the matter of six years.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 05:53-05:57
“Our population's growing 2.6% now.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 05:57-06:01
“The first thing we ought to do is go to biennial budgets.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 06:18-06:23
“We have over a thousand [confirmations].”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 06:45-06:49
“Congress can't do its constitutional duty in terms of oversight.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 07:36-07:43
“The deep state does not give its secrets easily.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 08:10-08:13
“Elon is exposing outrageous and grotesque levels of waste, fraud and abuse.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 08:54-09:03
“The President is using his authority to lay off workers and clean up agencies.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 09:27-09:34
“2019 we spent 4.4 [trillion dollars].”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 11:38-11:43
“In 2019, we spent $4.4 trillion. This year we're spending 7.3.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 11:38-11:46
“There's no justification for being spending $7.3 trillion.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 12:17-12:23
“There's no justification for us spending even a penny more than 6.5 trillion.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 12:17-12:23
“We're running $2 trillion a year deficits.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 12:31-12:36
“We're $36.4 trillion in debt.”
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“When I entered Congress, we were $14 trillion [in debt].”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 13:19-13:25
“If they [the tax cuts] expire, everybody's going to get a tax increase.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 14:05-26:51
“Social Security is a legal Ponzi scheme.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 17:55-17:58
“The money that we all got extracted from our checks has been spent. It is gone.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 18:01-18:08
“The trust fund...runs out in 2034, 2035.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 19:02-19:10
“Benefits will be reduced to the revenue that we take in...75 to 80%.”
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“Interest on our debt...is the largest expenditure item in the federal budget.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 19:52-19:52
“President Trump very effectively used the terror threat to secure the border in his first term.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 21:47-22:07
“We don't have free and fair trade.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 22:35-22:38
“We do need a steel industry, we need aluminum.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 23:58-24:01
“We should have incentives to try and maintain those vital types of industries.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 24:14-24:20
“We should really have a three step reconciliation process.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 24:49-24:54
“Those tax cuts in 2017 were for everybody.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 26:40-26:44
“President Trump is proposing new tax cuts.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 28:08-28:14
“We ain't going to balance the budget spending over $7 trillion this year.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 28:41-28:45
“They'll gerrymander it to probably take Derek Van Orden and Brian Stiles seat.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 30:21-30:28
“They'll overturn Act 10. They'll probably overturn voter ID.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 30:29-30:33
“I sent more than 60 oversight letters to HHS, NIH, CDC, FDA, Department of Defense, virtually got no information.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 33:16-33:27
“A group called ICANN Aaron Seri had to sue the government to get the results of a safety surveillance system.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 34:08-34:17
“25% of Americans had their daily lives affected by the injection.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 34:45-34:50
“8% had to seek medical care [due to the COVID injection].”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 34:51-34:55
“More than 37,000 people worldwide now died. 24% of those within the day of injection, within one or two days.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 35:00-35:12
“Look at $36.4 trillion in debt. Look at the fact that our interest just to service that debt is more than we spend on anything other than…”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 38:28-38:38
“Science has been corrupted thoroughly. If the Chinese government isn't paying for the medical journals, if the pharmaceutical companies…”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 38:52-39:11
“70% of researchers said, yeah, we can't replicate data of other research we're looking at.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 39:23-39:29
“Marcia angel was one of the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine quit in the year 2000. She finally started writing about why she…”
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“Why do we have 60% chronic illness in America today? And why don't we know the cause?”
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“Climate's always changed, always will.”
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“A $28 million check [was] made out to a completely bogus group set up by two [former] HHS employees.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 42:20-42:29
“Ignore $7.3 trillion, a massive amount of that being completely fraudulent and wasteful.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 42:46-42:55
“Some manager within USAID start, shred and burn everything.”
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“80,000 VA workers have not been dismissed.”
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“The VA is highly funded and that's not going to change.”
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“Trump came in and almost overnight, illegal crossings are down to a trickle.”
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“Millions, probably more than 10 million people come in here.”
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“They don't get cooperation from sanctuary cities.”
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“President Trump is pretty well delivered on [a secure border].”
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“Nationalizing elections, I think would be a very dangerous thing.”
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“We've got more than 7 million on our voter roll [in Wisconsin].”
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“80% of Americans support voter ID.”
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“Same day voter registration, which is dangerous.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 55:00-55:03
“80 courts have looked at this and they've all rejected. No, most of them never looked at the evidence.”
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“There's fraud in every election.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 56:09-56:12
“The real election denying started in 2016 by people of Hillary Clinton.”
DC breakfast with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson | Uploaded March 19, 2025 | 56:54-57:00
“51 intelligence officials said Hunter Biden laptop had all the earmarks of a Russian when they knew it was true.”
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“Clinton's spending level was voted for by Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Patty Murray, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley, Lindsey Graham, John…”
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“Medicaid's not a true name for it. It's traditional Medicaid plus Obamacare.”
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“Obamacare is funded at 90 cents on the dollar.”
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“When $36.4 trillion blows up in your face, it's not going to be pretty.”
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