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The DC Post: Ron Johnson’s Senate Smackdown

Posted July 6, 2011

By Tucker Scofield

I’ve been consistent in promoting the need for what I term “conservative hell raisers” in Washington, people who are unafraid to say those things that need to be said and damn the torpedoes. It seems I’ve stumbled across yet another conservative hell raiser, and man, do I like what this guy is threatening to do!

His name is Ron Johnson and he’s a freshman Republican senator from Wisconsin. The 56 year-old Johnson proudly associates himself with the Tea Party, has a degree in accounting, and is the owner of a manufacturing company, PACUR LLC, a polyester and plastics manufacturer located in Oshkosh.

Three things immediately stand out on Johnson’s over-simplified bio: He is a business owner, the business is manufacturing, and that business is located in America’s industrial heartland. These three things immediately qualify Johnson as an excellent spokesperson for both small businesses and the manufacturing sector, a man capable of accurately speaking to the challenges facing modern-day entrepreneurs, and a man capable of offering solutions to jump-starting our clinically dead economy.

Not coincidentally, these three things also mean that Johnson is infinitely more qualified to address these matters than our academia-laden, capitalist-loathing president.

Anyone who has owned a business knows that success does not follow indecisiveness or inactivity, and a mere six months into his tenure Johnson is fed up with Congress’ inactivity surrounding our debt, our deficit, and the budget. He took to the Senate floor this past Tuesday to express his displeasure and in the course of doing so, Johnson made clear what he intends to do to end to the posturing and bloviating creating this gridlock.

“Washington is broken and America is going broke. Our economy is in a coma,” said Johnson. “America hungers for leadership and it’s not getting any; not from President Obama, not from the United States Senate.” He went on to chastise our Democrat-led Congress for not passing a budget in over two years, and our Democrat president for submitting a budget “so unserious” that it did not receive a single vote of support in the Senate.

“Instead of rolling up his shirtsleeves and personally tackling the number one problem facing this nation right from the beginning, President Obama delegated his role in sporadic negotiations to Vice President Biden,” chided Johnson. But now that negotiations have broken down and Obama has engaged in the process, what type of process is it? A “broken process,” a closed-door, hidden-from-view process that Johnson calls “business-as-usual”…a process Johnson feels he was elected to change.

But how does one freshman member from one chamber of Congress change behavior in our leviathan body politic?

Johnson’s solution uses an arcane Senate rule known as “unanimous consent.” Unanimous consent is typically used to push through the countless housekeeping measures that keep the Senate chamber running. It prevents the Senate from being further bogged down by procedure on measures which all members are in agreement.

But all it takes is one member to disagree, one solitary voice of dissent, and things grind to a halt. Johnson intends to be that voice.

“Now I’m pretty new here,” said Johnson. “I don’t pretend to understand everything that makes the Senate work…but I do know the Senate runs on something called unanimous consent. So unless we receive some assurance from the Democrat leadership that we will actually start addressing our budget out in the open, in the bright light of day, I will begin to object. I will begin to withhold my consent,” he said. And with those words, Johnson drew a line in the sand.

Is it really that simple? Could it be that an effective tool for slowing down Obama’s hell-train to socialism has been in place all along and that Johnson is the only Senate member possessing the smarts and/or the guts required to utilize it?? It sounds too good to be true. But oh dear Lord, how much FUN would it be if it worked?? To see Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Senate’s liberal Dems squirming in anguish as they are held hostage by Johnson’s solitary voice of dissent would be priceless! And from a freshman, no less!

Senator Johnson, we here at The DC Post tip our hat to you! It appears you have a simple yet brilliant strategy, and we can hardly wait to see its implementation. We promise to follow this closely and report your victories as they come because it’s not just Wisconsin who cares about this, Senator…it’s all of us.

Now go get ‘em.

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Slate: Wish You Weren’t Here

Posted July 6, 2011

Even members of Congress, still in session, are feeling pretty useless this week.

By David Weigel

Posted Wednesday, July 6, 2011, at 8:03 AM ET

The Senate floor is mostly empty. When the session begins on Tuesday, the Democratic and Republican leaders shuffle the notes for their first remarks. The well of the House is emptier; the doors are closed for a pro forma session in which literally nothing is happening. The hundreds of tourists walking in and out of the gallery look more bored than people wearing T-shirts and sandals really ought to look.
You’d never know there was a debt crisis. Congress is in session this week because Republicans didn’t want a weeklong holiday recess, and Democrats obliged them. “Our country is going bankrupt,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., last week, making the ask. “We should not be going on holiday.”
It was a deal: no holiday. Congress is on emergency watch with weeks to go, maybe, before an analyst at Moody’s or S&P gets cut off in traffic, needs to vent, and decides to downgrade the credit rating of the United States. What does Congress look like on emergency watch? Picture the way Congress looks at any other time. Got it? Now: Slow it down.
The problem with this particular crisis is that Congress doesn’t really have the power to make a deal on the debt ceiling. It will, eventually, vote on a compromise plan, which Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky libertarian, may or may not try to filibuster. In the meantime, the deal is being crafted by a combination of meetings, threats of meetings, and media manipulation by a few actors: the president, the vice president, and leaders in Congress.
“The fundamental reality,” says Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the Hill, “is that Congress is going to vote up or down on a package that is put together by a small number of leaders. Coming back right now is 90 percent about optics.”
How much is this about optics? On Tuesday, as he did last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell extends an offer: The president can come meet him and other leaders, and “hear what can actually pass in Congress.” This will be reported as an invitation to a meeting, but that’s not really what it is. The president is not going to give the thumbs-up to what McConnell has just described as a one-way lecture about Republican demands. In their prepared statements, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and McConnell don’t even agree on the timeline. Reid says it could be a “matter of days.” McConnell says “weeks.”
No one has figured out the right way to goad the White House about this. About the only thing anyone has figured out today is that spiking other legislation will confirm that Congress is really, really serious. The only business on the Senate floor is a resolution on the military intervention in Libya, drafted by John Kerry and John McCain. There have been objections to this, including an outright “no” vote in the House. It takes on water today because senators want to talk about debt instead.
“Instead of focusing on the issue at hand,” says Sen. Bob Corker on the floor, “we’re gonna focus on something, possibly, that is irrelevant! That has nothing to do with the issue at hand! It’s just to show that we’re doing something!”
It becomes clear that his fellow Republicans will vote against the resolution; after a little more than an hour, the resolution is pulled, and senators declare victory.
“While Libya is important,” says Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., “the issue before us right now is not Libya.”
Technically, there’s nothing else for the Senate to do all day. One more vote is put on the schedule—a vote to request that all senators show up for votes. This lasts more than an hour, and gets 83 ayes and eight nays. Just like that, the day’s work is done. This is the first day of the surprise post-holiday session, which will, theoretically, hammer out deals on debt.
Nobody’s happy about it.
“One of the main reasons I started to object last week was because of the process,” says Johnson in a chat with reporters. “For just a few people, a limited number of individuals, to go behind closed doors, far from the view of the American public—is that really going to be how we decide the financial fate of America? I do not think so! I do not believe that’s what the founders envisioned!”
And yet, it keeps happening. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., reminisces about how in December, a deal on taxes was figured out in a few high-level meetings, then voted on, and in April a deal to keep the government running was figured out in high-level meetings, then voted on. Why does this keep happening?
Well, consider these two headlines from the Los Angeles Times. From June 30: “Senate To Scrap July 4 Recess To Work on Debt-Limit Deal.” From July 4: “112th Congress Is One of the Least Productive in Years.”
Both of those stories were written by the same reporter.
Taken together, they don’t make sense—at least not until you realize that legislating very little, and forcing the biggest spending cuts or caps they could get, is what a lot of Republicans came here for. And not until you realize that Senate Democrats benefit if they bring up good political votes. The only debt vote scheduled for this week is a “sense of the Senate” resolution, co-signed by 17 Democrats, which concludes:
It is the sense of the Senate that any agreement to reduce the budget deficit should require that those earning $1,000,000 or more per year make a more meaningful contribution to the deficit reduction effort.
The optics are terrific. Democrats put Republicans on the spot again. Republicans goad the president about his refusal to talk to them. If Sessions has his way, they keep talking about the balanced budget amendment, spending caps, and everything else they want discussed in order for them to accept a deal. On Thursday, the president will meet with the people actually negotiating the deal, and sets new terms.
“We came back,” asks Johnson, before taking the day’s final vote, “but to do what?”

Even members of Congress, still in session, are feeling pretty useless this week.

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Politico: Freshman Republican senators go guerilla

Posted July 6, 2011
By: Scott Wong
July 5, 2011 11:29 PM EDT
Six months into their first term, a band of Republican freshmen are fed up with the tortoise pace of the Senate and have resorted to guerrilla warfare to take on the establishment — and it’s causing headaches for leaders of both parties.

Sen. Ron Johnson, who unseated Democratic Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold last November, mounted a protest last week against Democrats’ failure to produce a budget — an effort that culminated Tuesday when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was forced to yank a bipartisan Libya resolution from the floor.

Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky firebrand and tea-party favorite, warned this weekend he would filibuster in an attempt to pry open closed-door debt ceiling negotiations.

And a key reason that the Senate is in session during what should be the chamber’s Fourth of July recess? Freshman GOP senators, including Johnson, Paul, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Marco Rubio of Florida, threatened a recess revolt that would force both parties to take an embarrassing vote to skip town.

The new breed of troublemaker creates problems for Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. They must now deal with an unpredictable, angst-ridden crowd uninterested in the pay-your-dues tradition of the Senate at the same time they’re engaged in tense negotiations over the debt ceiling.

“I think different freshmen have different challenges in adjusting,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who was elected last November to fill Joe Biden’s old Senate seat. “I’ve watched as a number of freshman senators — Paul and Sen. Johnson would be examples — decide to throw their oars in the water and express their frustration about particular amendments, procedural points and not being heard by throwing up a hand and stopping the work.

“Pretty quickly that seems to teach a harsh lesson about upsetting not just the other caucus but your own caucus,” Coons said.

Last week, Johnson didn’t bother giving his GOP colleagues a heads up before he stormed onto the Senate floor and warned that he would block all Senate business until Democrats started debating the budget.

Surprised Republican leaders, while sympathetic to the Wisconsinite’s concerns, pulled the rookie aside and urged him to take a less draconian approach, sources said. The plastics manufacturer and political neophyte quickly relented, but he warned he’d object again to routine “unanimous consent” requests if Democrats didn’t change their ways.

He made good on his word Thursday night, objecting to Reid’s request to move directly to a vote on a resolution by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Aiz.) that would authorize limited U.S. military operations in Libya. And he issued new threats in a TV interview Tuesday morning even as fellow GOP senators were whipping a cloture vote on the Libya measure.

By that afternoon, the entire 47-member Republican caucus had vowed to vote against the Libya resolution, saying the Senate should focus only on budget matters this week. With the resolution doomed to fail, Reid canceled the vote, saying he and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) agreed that “the most important thing for us to focus on this week is the budget.”

But Reid quickly scheduled a separate vote Wednesday on a nonbinding resolution expressing that millionaires should make “a more meaningful contribution to the deficit-reduction effort,” a proposal panned by Ayotte as a “political stunt on behalf of the majority leader.”

“The United States Senate has not passed a budget in over two years. And I’ve certainly understood how broken Washington is,” Johnson told reporters after Reid scrapped the Libya vote. “The Senate is basically fiddling as America goes bankrupt.”

Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) is expected to preview his fiscal 2012 budget blueprint to his caucus on Wednesday. But he’s reluctant to have the committee or full Senate take up the proposal until a bipartisan deal is reached to raise the debt ceiling before the U.S. reaches its legal borrowing limit on Aug. 2. That explanation hasn’t appeased Johnson, a committee member.

“Last week was a warning,” Johnson later told POLITICO. “I was putting the Senate on notice that unless they start taking these issues up, I’ll withhold my consent. I will make it very difficult to operate the Senate.”

Johnson hasn’t been the only one stirring the pot. In a C-SPAN interview over the weekend, Paul, a co-founder of the Senate Tea Party Caucus, said he would mount a filibuster until the chamber began addressing the nation’s debt crisis. He cheered Reid’s decision to scrap the Libya vote.

“Last week a group of us said, ‘No more.’ We do not want to discuss anything else until we start discussing solutions for the debt, solutions for the looming debt crisis. We said, ‘No more,’” Paul said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “Today, we will win and draw attention back to the debt ceiling. We’re not going to talk about anything until we resolve this.”

But Paul and other freshmen have been putting McConnell in a tricky spot as he and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) try to hash out a deal with the White House on raising the debt limit. Paul, Johnson, Rubio and nine other senators who have signed the so-called Cap, Cut, Balance pledge, said they’ll vote to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling only if Congress passes a balanced budget amendment and other significant spending reforms first.

GOP aides said that McConnell backs a constitutional amendment requiring the government to balance its books each year and that the minority leader is pushing for a vote on the proposal the week of July 18.

But McConnell has resisted efforts to link the amendment with a debt hike, especially given the reality the amendment lacks the 67 votes needed for passage. That position was evident during a GOP news conference McConnell led last week: More than a dozen senators lined up to promote the balanced budget amendment, but not one mentioned the Cut, Cap, Balance pledge.

“Would I prefer that all members of my party felt the same way … that I do about the Cut, Cap and Balance pledge? The answer is yes,” said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), another co-founder of the Tea Party Caucus and a staunch supporter of the pledge. “That said, I’m happy with any degree of enthusiasm that there is for the balanced budget amendment, and anything that will help move it forward is a good thing.”

Many of these freshman hope to rally support for their proposal this week, something that would not have been possible had Reid not cancelled the Fourth of July recess — the first time that’s happened since the Watergate scandal.

Rubio, another tea party darling, who defeated favored Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in last year’s GOP primary and went on to win the Senate seat, was one of a handful of freshman who joined senior Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) in pressuring Reid last week not to adjourn.

“This debt thing didn’t sneak up on us. We’ve known about it for months,” Rubio told POLITICO. “I’m just shocked that it’s taken this long to even begin to have this level of anxiety about it. This lack of sense of urgency with regard to these issues is trouble, startling, so I hope that will start to change.

“It’s a good thing that we’ll have to be here,” he added. “It’s a better thing if we actually do something while we’re here.”

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