In a call with Utah reporters Thursday, Sen. Mitt Romney said he will vote for a bill suspending the nation’s debt limit, and he had high praise for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who oversaw negotiations on the bill for Republicans.

McCarthy notched a win Wednesday when the bill was approved by the House in a bipartisan vote.

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Romney said the Fiscal Responsibility Act doesn’t go far enough to reduce the nation’s debt, but includes some important reforms. The bill would suspend the debt limit until January 2025, in exchange for $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years and includes some reforms, including broadening work requirements for some welfare programs.

“Look, this isn’t Christmas. The opposition party is not going to give us everything we want,” Romney said. “But Speaker McCarthy was able to accomplish a great deal — and by the way, probably the most underestimated man in Washington, D.C., is Speaker McCarthy.”

Romney praised the speaker for accomplishing what he said most people considered a “real long shot” — getting a bipartisan agreement through the House.

“I was very concerned, originally, that Kevin McCarthy would not be able to get a debt ceiling bill passed in the House. And he did,” Romney said. “And then I was concerned that the president would stick to his guns and not agree to negotiate, in which case we would have had a default, which would have been catastrophic for the economy and for working families. And the president backed off of that, frankly, because (Republicans) stood together.”

And then, after a compromise was reached, Romney said he worried McCarthy wouldn’t be able to get a majority of Republicans to go along with it.

“And he did, he got it done. He got the president to agree to a number of things that were high priorities for us and got a bill in place that’s better than what we would have had otherwise,” Romney said.

“And are there things I wish were different in it? Yes. Are there flaws? Absolutely. Is there opportunity to improve it down the road? Yeah, of course. But he accomplished what I think most people thought was a real long shot, and he deserves the credit that’s due, and so I think the mood among most of my colleagues, both Democrat and Republican, is positive. We dodged a bullet here.”

Romney said he would support all of the amendments offered by fellow Republicans, including an amendment from fellow Utah Sen. Mike Lee, but said he doesn’t expect they’ll be added to the bill without Democratic support.

Lee has been very critical of the bill, and said he would not support it. He does not think it goes far enough on spending reforms and budget cuts.

Romney said Lee is “someone who speaks from conscience and will do his best to improve the legislation.”

“And if he’s successful in getting some Democrats to vote for (his amendment), that’d be a good thing,” Romney said. “I support his amendment.”

Romney agrees the bill doesn’t goes far enough to address inflation, which has strained American families’ budgets for almost two years, and doesn’t do enough to address runaway entitlement spending.

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“Did we get as much as we wanted? Well, of course not,” he said. “That’s the nature of compromise between a government which has one House that’s barely Republican, a four-person majority, ... and then a Senate ... and a presidency that are Democrat.”

And, he said, the alternatives — a condition-free debt ceiling increase, or a default on the debt — were worse.

Looking forward, he said he would like Congress to look at changes to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, since those programs make up two-thirds of the federal budget and their costs are growing.

Some of the entitlement reforms Romney said should be on the table include raising the retirement age for younger workers, reducing benefits for wealthy retirees, and raising or broadening the payroll taxes that help pay for the programs.

Romney was asked when he planned to announce if he’d run again, and he said the announcement would come in the summer or fall, and would be based on what he felt like he could accomplish moving forward.

“I am doing what I’ve got to do to make sure that if I decide to run again, I’ll win. So I’m raising money, I put together a team and keeping my options open,” he said.