Five senators who know how to control federal spending

This will come as a shock to those who believe the only significant news in recent weeks has been the Benghazi, IRS and AP/Fox News intimidation scandals, but there have been some significant developments on other issues. Consider the May 14 “Dear Colleague” letter by Republican Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona. One sentence in particular stands out: “We, therefore, are notifying you of our intention to object to the consideration of any legislation that fails to meet any of the following standards:”

» All new spending must be offset with cuts to lower-priority spending. The most egregious failure of recent Congresses and presidents has been failing to set priorities in the federal budget. As the five explain, “Congress authorizes billions of dollars in new spending every year to create new government programs or expand existing ones. Yet, few bills are passed to eliminate outdated, duplicative, unnecessary, inefficient, wasteful, or low-priority programs.”

» Government programs must be periodically reviewed and renewed. If the program isn’t doing what it was established to do, fix it or terminate it. What could more reasonable? Who can argue with, as the five senators say, including for every federal spending initiative “a ‘sunset’ date at which point Congress must decide whether or not to update, extend, and end the program”?

» Duplicative government programs must be consolidated or eliminated. Again, what could be more reasonable than the federal government having, for example, one job training program, not 76? But when was the last time Congress and the president acted on bills, as these five senators put it, “to eliminate outdated, duplicative, unnecessary, inefficient, wasteful, or low-priority programs”?

» The cost and text of bills must be available prior to passage. Too often, Congress passes bills with thousands of pages of spending instructions without ever reading them. The way to stop such fecklessness, according to the five senators, is to require that “all legislation must be publicly available in an electronic format for at least three full days along with a cost estimate completed by the Congressional Budget Office prior to being passed.”

» Congress must not infringe upon the constitutional rights of the people. The national debt is $17 trillion and soaring because Congress and the president insist on regulating everything from how many grams of fat Americans eat each day to what they can do with puddles of water that happen to occur on their property. Washington must stick to doing only what the Constitution empowers it to do.

One letter sent to other lawmakers cannot guarantee that bad bills will now be stopped cold, but surely the Senate will be forced to do what it has done too little of in recent years, namely, devote serious and sustained attention to the details of federal spending. Readers who live in states other than Arizona, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Wisconsin should ask both of their senators if they’ve signed on to this letter yet and if not, why not?

Published by The Washington Examiner.

Politico: Sen. Ron Johnson pounds Obamacare

By: Kevin Robillard on March 11, 2013

Sen. Ron Johnson on Monday ripped into Obamacare, trying to back up House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s decision to seek the law’s repeal in his proposed budget.

“I think the cost estimate of Obamacare is grossly understated,” Johnson said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I think far more Americans are going to lose their employer-sponsored care, because there are incentives for employers to drop their coverage and make their employees eligible for huge subsidies and exchanges. I think this is going to explode our deficit, I think this is going to lead to rationing. It will lead to rationing, lower quality of care.”

Johnson was defending the decision by his fellow Wisconsin Republican, Ryan, to include a repeal of the Affordable Care Act in his budget proposal, which will be unveiled on Tuesday. Conservative hopes for the law’s repeal have been dashed twice, first by the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the law as constitutional and again by President Barack Obama’s reelection in November — a victory his opponent, Mitt Romney, attributed to the law’s popularity with minority voters.

Johnson’s arguments against the law have been a staple of Republican rhetoric since the beginning of the health care debate in 2008, and helped him win election in 2010.

Published by Politico.

Op-Ed: What the president won’t say tonight

By Ron Johnson

Throughout its history, the federal government has properly used debt to help overcome threats to the nation and to build necessary and longstanding infrastructure. Much of the American Revolution was financed with borrowed money, as were World War II and the Cold War against the now defunct Soviet Union.

The interstate highway system, coastal ports, and the locks and dams that make our inland waterways navigable are examples of valuable debt financed infrastructure. Failure to incur debt to finance these worthy, constitutionally allowed activities would have made the establishment of our prosperous nation more difficult, or maybe even brought our history to a premature end.

But for the past two generations, and particularly during the last 12 years, Washington has begun to pile up a massive and unsustainable level of debt. For the most part, that red ink spending wasn’t used to avert national crisis or to rebuild an aging infrastructure. The deficit spending that built that debt was used primarily to pay for current operations of ever-expanding government in Washington and to fund ongoing government programs.

Washington’s permanent establishment has sold a toxic bill of goods to the American people, who haven’t read the fine print on the back of the contract.

One major consequence of this huge accumulation of debt in Washington has been the harm it is causing to the American economy right now. Out-of-control deficit spending and debt are undermining the private sector, business expansion, and the creation of new jobs.

Another ominous consequence of Washington’s political greed and fiscal insanity is the future direct cost of borrowing all that money. The current debt stands at $16.4 trillion dollars, and Washington has plans to add another $10 trillion to that amount over the next 10 years.

But before Washington can pay a soldier to protect this nation; before Washington can send out a Social Security check or pay a Medicare bill; before Washington can spend a dollar to build an inch of federal highway, or inspect our beef, or fund basic R&D to help discover a new life-saving drug – it must first make certain it can pay the interest on its debt to the people, entities and nations that have lent us money. That’s just a fact.

This year, the American taxpayer will pony up $224 billion just to pay that interest on our growing debt. What does that mean to you? That’s over $1,850 per American household – this year alone.

And here is where it starts to get increasingly scary. The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that between 2014 to 2018, Americans will pay $1.77 trillion of their hard earned money, just to pay the interest. The Congressional Budget Office then estimated that the interest we all will pay in the five years after 2018 is $3.64 trillion – about the size of our entire federal budget in 2012 and an estimated cost of $30,000 per current household over that five-year period.

Just to remind you again, that money can’t be used for government programs or defense of the nation. It doesn’t even pay off or reduce Washington’s debt. It merely pays interest to our money lenders.

This is not a partisan issue. Both major parties have helped create that debt. Whether you are a Republican, Democrat or independent, the debt impacts you. Whether you are conservative, moderate or liberal, we are all in the same economic boat and we will sink or float together.

Washington has been unwise, irresponsible and greedy. That much is not even debatable. The real questions are: Do the American people have the wisdom Washington lacks? Will the American people demand that the professional political class in Washington kick its addiction to spending money it does not have and stop endangering the economic security of the very people they purport to represent?

On Tuesday night, President Obama will address many issues in his State of the Union address. I can promise you he will try to sell Americans on increasing taxes again. He will talk about “investing in America,”, which is Washington political window dressing for increased Washington spending and future debt.

President Obama will outline more things Washington can do for you. In fact, he’ll declare that these are things Washington should do for you.

What he won’t address – at least honestly address – is the fine print of his contract. He won’t address the massive suffering that will result if this nation does not get its financial house in order. He won’t say that his plans do not include reduced spending and smaller government in Washington. He won’t lay out the problem of debt or how Washington can begin mitigating and then reducing the true cost of that debt and put this nation back on a path of enduring prosperity.

Read more on The Tribune-Review.

USA Today Op-Ed: Secretary Hillary Clinton, you failed

By Senator Ron Johnson

During her Senate testimony, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that approximately 25 Americans who were on the ground or who witnessed the terrorist attack in Benghazi were immediately evacuated. Secretary Clinton also revealed that neither she, nor her senior people, debriefed or spoke with those people immediately after the attack, or for months afterward, to understand what happened. She stated that she didn’t want to be later accused of playing politics.

When I questioned her about the misinformation disseminated for days by the administration, most notably by Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice on Sunday news programs five days after the attack, she asked, “What difference does it make?”

If you don’t expeditiously debrief the people who witnessed the attack, how can you understand who initiated it, what weapons they used and who may have been involved? How do you initiate a proper response if you don’t know what transpired? How do you move properly to protect other American assets and people in the region? How do you know what failures occurred, so that you can immediately correct them, if you have not debriefed the very victims of those failures? And lastly, how do you tell the truth to the American people if you don’t know the facts?

Our diplomatic forces in Benghazi were denied the security they repeatedly requested for many months before Sept. 11, 2012. Secretary Clinton stated that she was not told of those desperate requests in the most dangerous region in the world. As a result, our people in Benghazi were ill-prepared to repel or avoid that attack, and four Americans were murdered. For many days after the event, the American people were also misinformed as to the nature and perpetrators of that attack.

In truth, Benghazi is a failure of leadership — before, during and after the terrorist attack.

To answer Secretary Clinton, it does make a difference. It matters enormously for the American public to know whether or not their president and members of his administration are on top of a crisis and telling them the truth.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Published in USA Today.

The Washington Post: Interview with Sen. Ron Johnson

Posted by Jennifer Rubin on January 10, 2013 at 1:33 pm

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is blunt when it comes to President Obama’s recent Cabinet nominees. “It is just in your face. He is going to dig his heels in even further. It is not a good sign,” he told me in telephone interview this morning. On Chuck Hagel he says, “I think it will be a tough confirmation fight.” He contends that Hagel, Jack Lew and other nominees demonstrate that “the president is selecting people he ideologically identifies with and not designed to work cooperatively with Congress.”

To give him his due, Johnson figured that out long before Obama’s second term. “I’ve never felt President Obama negotiated in good faith. He got his health-care law he wanted. He is going to dig his heels and protect his gains.” When it comes to entitlement reform and fiscal restraint more generally, Johnson says, “He has zero credibility. On the fiscal cliff, he got on the tax side the increases he wanted.” Johnson says that “as soon as he gets it, the next thing he says is we need more taxes,” and, even worse, that he “won’t negotiate about the debt ceiling.” As to the latter he says, “It’s delusional. He has to go to Congress.”

Johnson also says that anti-gun legislation is not going to get jammed through. “People say they want a middle ground. We are at the middle ground. We have plenty of gun laws,” But, he concedes, “at least they are looking at a wider range of causes [for mass killings]. But if they are going to rush something through in 30 days, I don’t see it happening.”

Johnson, not surprisingly, given his business background, has long advocated a unified strategic plan for the GOP to prioritize goals, figure out how to communicate with the public and get what it can with a Democratic president and Democratic majority in the Senate, something Republicans sorely need. He is a staunch fiscal conservative who ran in the heyday and with the support of the tea party movement. But he is also a savvy realist. “First of all, we need to set expectations. President Obama is president. Harry Reid is Senate majority leader.” With Democratic resistance to any meaningful spending restraint, he says, Republicans “can’t lead Americans to believe we can solve this situation. We can make sure they understand President Obama has no intention and no plans to reduce the debt.”

Johnson is right. After hyping big standoffs with the president, Republicans have inevitably retreated, only to annoy their base and embolden the president. Johnson says it is crucial to make clear what the GOP is up against. “We simply do not have a good-faith negotiating partner.”

Part of the problem comes from irregular budget processes and secret negotiations that inevitably fail and make the GOP look bad. “I’ve been on the budget committee for two years,” he says. “Do you know the number of times we have voted on a budget, had mark-ups? Zero.” He looks at the debt ceiling, the sequestration and the end of the continuing resolution in tandem. “I don’t want to play brinksmanship. The House should pass legislation so when we start this time to say we can hold the line, we can hold the line.” He says Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) had the right idea in favoring legislation that would prioritize spending in the event we hit the debt ceiling. He says it should be renamed something like the “We do not default on the debt” act. If a procedure is set up to guarantee that bond holders and Social Security recipients can get paid, Johnson thinks the GOP will have a much better argument on debt reduction. He favors the “Boehner rule,” $1 of cuts for every $1 the debt is increased.

Johnson argues there is no shortage of savings available. He cites a 2011 Congressional Budget Office study updated in 2012 that laid out potential cuts. That report made clear:
Without significant changes in the laws governing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, those factors will boost federal outlays as a percentage of GDP well above the average of the past several decades — a conclusion that applies under any plausible assumptions about future trends in demographics, economic conditions and health-care costs. Unless the laws governing those programs are changed — or the increased spending is accompanied by sufficiently lower spending on other programs, sufficiently higher revenue, or a combination of the two — deficits will be much larger.

Johnson combed the report and found trillions in potential cuts in mandatory and discretionary spending. He wouldn’t support all of them, but the notion that we have cut government in any meaningful way can fairly only be said about the federal government’s first priority, national defense. Johnson is candid about the public’s willingness to embrace spending cuts. “Americans on a macro-level agree with us, but then if you ask what should we cut, the answer is virtually nothing.” He stresses that the keys to any progress are communication with the public and political pressure on lawmakers and the president.

Johnson’s advice should be heeded. Set expectations. Develop a communications plan. Take away the default threat while making clear which spending disciple the GOP favors and what the president favors (virtually nothing on the domestic side). In the end, however, people get the government they deserve. Unfortunately, it is one in which two major actors, the Senate and White House, won’t act responsibly on spending.

Published by The Washington Post.

Senator Johnson on Appointment of Rep. Tim Scott to U.S. Senate

“I want to congratulate Congressman Scott on his appointment to the U.S. Senate. I look forward to working with him on reining in out of control spending, eliminating unnecessary regulation, and promoting economic growth. He is an excellent choice to continue Senator Jim DeMint’s work.”