The Hill: Johnson threatens Senate filibuster over lack of budget

By Josiah Ryan – 01/27/12 12:47 PM ET

Freshman Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) threatened once again this week to bring the Senate to a grinding halt if Democrats fails to produce a budget that can clear the upper chamber by April 15.

“If we haven’t passed a budget by April 15th this year, you can rest assured that on April 16th… I’ll start withholding my consent to draw attention to the issue that we have not passed a budget, that we are not seriously addressing the financial situation of this country,” said Johnson speaking at the Capitol. “It’s the minimum that the American people can expect or should expect.

“This is a national scandal,” continued Johnson. “[I]t is imperative that we get our federal budget under control. And the first step, the minimum thing that Congress should do, is follow the law that it passed to put discipline on itself and pass a budget.”

Johnson was referring to the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, which requires the House and Senate to each pass budget resolutions with spending limits and revenue targets by April 15 for the next fiscal year.

Republicans in both chambers on Tuesday noted in advance of President Obama’s State of the Union address that it was by coincidence the 1,000-day anniversary of the last time Congress passed a budget by regular order.

Ranking member of the Senate Committee on the Budget Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) suggested his Democratic counterpart Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) did not want to produce a concrete budget because it would reveal plans for out-of-control spending.

Conrad, however, hit back from the Senate floor arguing that the summer’s Budget Control Act included a budget for the next two years and in was in some respects more meaningful than a budget since it carries the force of law.

Johnson, however, dismissed that argument, claiming the Congressional Budget Act still needed to be satisfied with a real budget, passed by regular Senate order.

“It is a ridiculous notion to say that a hurried backroom deal replaces the budgeting process and committee markup in the Senate,” Johnson said. “Budgets aren’t just a single maximum number, but begin the process for Congress to identify the nation’s priorities and what resources will be spent to address them.”

Johnson has leveled several filibuster threats since entering the Senate last January, making good on at least one in June when he also objected to what he characterized as Democrats’ negligence on budgetary matters.

This article was published on The Hill.

Op-Ed: Bridge is example of political parties working together

By Ron Johnson, U.S. Wisconsin Senator (R-Oshkosh)

If you pay attention to the news from Washington, D.C., you might believe that Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on anything. But I went to Washington willing to work with anyone who will acknowledge a problem and help develop real solutions. A case in point is the bipartisan agreement that has now been reached on replacing the Stillwater lift bridge.

Traveling around western Wisconsin, the need for a new bridge crossing over the St. Croix River is obvious. The current bridge has been a problem for decades. It is 80 years old, and was rated “structurally deficient” in 2008. The Interstate 35W bridge, which collapsed in Minnesota in 2007, received a considerably higher rating than the Stillwater lift bridge.

The lift bridge was never intended to carry the level of traffic that it currently does. The Twin Cities has seen enormous growth since 1930 — as has the entire region. A bridge that was sufficient 80 years ago is simply inadequate now. All too often, drivers are caught in backups that stretch for miles. This has created serious safety concerns, as motorists cut corners and look for ways to cross the river more quickly.

The outdated bridge poses more than just a safety concern. This inadequate infrastructure imposes limits on economic growth in the region. When workers and commerce can’t move quickly and efficiently, jobs, investment, and growth go elsewhere. This has become a serious problem for people on both sides of the St. Croix River.

My experience in manufacturing and business has also taught me how economic development can positively affect an area when a major project is initiated. The economic impact of a new bridge on the local communities — both during construction and after — will be decidedly positive. According to the Minnesota Department of Transportation, more than 6,000 full time workers will be required during peak construction. In addition, this upgrade of an important element of regional infrastructure will help facilitate economic development for decades.

It has been 30 years since the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota began working with the Department of Transportation to determine a way to replace the bridge. It has been nearly 10 years since a group of 27 stakeholders started meeting to try to develop a concrete plan. And it’s been six years since those stakeholders came together in near unanimity on a way forward: the existing bridge would be retained for pedestrian and bicycle crossings, while a new one was built for vehicles. That bridge would be built with a combination of state and federal money — funds that have already been provided. With clear direction and buy-in from those most affected, it seemed only a matter of time before the project was under way.

Since then, the biggest obstacle has been federal regulations that prevented a new bridge from being built. The well-intentioned Wild and Scenic Rivers Act effectively blocked any action. Instead of seeking a balance between economic development and environmental protection, some interest groups have resolutely stood in the way of a compromise.

Despite this opposition, Wisconsin and Minnesota members of Congress from both parties worked together to break the logjam. In November, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved the St. Croix River Crossing Project Authorization Act. Both Congressional delegations then met with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to express support for the legislation. The bill grants an exemption that allows the crossing to be built with safeguards to ensure it has a minimal impact on the environment. The bill was approved by the Senate Monday.

Passage of this legislation is an important bipartisan achievement of the Congressional delegations of Wisconsin and Minnesota. It would not have been possible without the hard work of bill sponsor Senator Amy Klobuchar, who has been a real leader on this issue, as well as myself, Senator Al Franken and Senator Herb Kohl. Hopefully the House with the strong leadership of Representatives Michele Bachmann, Chip Cravaack, Sean Duffy, and Ron Kind will soon pass the bill and deliver a common sense win for the entire region.

This article was published on The Hudson Star Observer.

The Hill: GOP lawmakers mark 1,000 days since last Senate budget

By Bernie Becker and Erik Wasson – 01/24/12 12:33 PM ET

Senate Republicans slammed their Democratic colleagues on Tuesday for not passing a budget in exactly 1,000 days, accusing Democrats of shirking their duty in a period of soaring deficits.

Four senators at a Tuesday news conference said President Obama should be more of a leader on reining in deficits. GOP lawmakers have for months pointed out the time elapsed since the Senate last passed a budget.

“It is imperative that we get our federal budget under control and the first step – the minimum thing that Congress should do – is follow the law that it passed to put discipline on itself,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who also called the lack of a Senate budget “a national scandal.”

Johnson also said that he would procedurally tie up the Senate if the chamber hasn’t passed a budget by April 15, a move he also made last June to protest the budget situation.

“The other side really does need to put their plan, their budget, on a piece of paper,” Johnson added. “Not just say that they’re for a grand bargain, not just say they’re for fiscal control.”

Republicans’ latest push on the issue comes the same day that the president is scheduled to head to the Capitol to deliver his State of the Union address.

GOP aides said that it was a coincidence that the president was invited to speak to Congress on the 1,000-day anniversary of the last Senate budget. Obama also delivered his 2011 State of the Union address on the fourth Tuesday in January.

For their part, Senate Democrats on Tuesday pushed back on the GOP claims that the Senate had not cleared a budget plan.

The Senate Budget Committee, chaired by Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), released an analysis asserting that the deal reached in August to raise the debt ceiling was, for all intents and purposes, a budget.

The Budget Control Act (BCA) included caps on discretionary spending and examined entitlement programs and revenue, the analysis said. “Republican rhetoric aside, Congress did pass a budget,” the fact sheet added.

“Either they don’t know what they did or they are misrepresenting what we all did,” Conrad said on the floor.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said that Democrats should be embarassed to claim the budget act as their blueprint because it “fell far, far short of solving this country’s fiscal problems.”

“If the BCA is their answer to fiscal sanity and preventing a debt crisis, then heaven help us,” Ryan said.

The office of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) pointed out that Senate Democrats did write a budget resolution but refused to mark it up in committee last year.

Sessions said that the U.S. still faced a dire debt situation, even with the caps included in the debt ceiling deal and the automatic cuts scheduled to go into effect due to the failure of the deficit-reduction supercommittee.

“The limits that we have are not sufficient,” Sessions said. “They were the best that could be accomplished under the circumstances, with the threat of a government shutdown.”

In all, the debt-ceiling deal will lead to north of $2 trillion in spending cuts, while bipartisan commissions have said that the U.S. needs more like $4 trillion in fiscal restraint over a decade.

“Is it not the responsibility of the president, the chief executive office, to tell the American people that the $2 trillion is not enough?” Sessions said, hours before Obama’s State of the Union address.

target=”_blank”>This article was published on TheHill.com.

The Washington Post: Sen. Ron Johnson’s plan to go on offense

In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, freshman Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) proposed an approach for sharpening the differences between the parties and garnering credit for Republicans who have tried to move forward on many fronts. He contends that Republicans have come out looking like the ones responsible for gridlock. Republicans have to go on “offense,” he urged, which is a tall order for the minority party in the Senate. He laid out a plan called “America’s Choice”:

America’s Choice seeks to highlight the differences between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party led by President Obama. It could do so over the coming months by presenting to the country, through a series of votes in the House of Representatives, the battle between those who believe in broadest terms in limited government and freedom and those who promote government control and dependency.

What are the choices these votes could present? Growing government spending and debt or growing the private sector and reducing government. Limiting energy development or using America’s energy resources. Punishing success or pro-growth tax reform. A government takeover of health care or repealing ObamaCare and replacing it with patient-centered, free-market reforms.

I spoke with him by phone yesterday. He explained that rather than react to the president and get blamed when secret negotiations don’t result in deals, Republicans in the House and Senate should take an issue a month, highlight it, introduce legislation and sell it to the American people.

Rather than have waited for the White House to initiate action last year or meekly followed the congressional calendar, he said, “A better path would have been to have an open and instructive strategy. This is what President Obama is about, and this is what we are about.” In selecting five issues (energy, spending, tax reform, regulation and health-care reform including repeal of Obamacare) to focus on and collaborating on a common set of facts, Johnson thinks that Republicans can convince the American people that Republicans are closer to their views on government than are the Democrats. On restraining the size of government, for example, the message he said is simple: “He wants to grow government. We’re about growing the private sector.”

Much of this will not involve starting afresh on legislation. He pointed to Ohio Sen. Rob Portman’s pro-growth jobs package, for example, that could be adopted. In addition, there is legislation that has passed the House but never received a vote in the Senate.

Johnson told me, “The hope is that Senate Democrats will actually pass some of this. Do I think that is likely? No.” But he said, the process of presenting legislation and contrasting philosophies of government is a useful one.

He said that he has already consulted with 10 senators and gotten positive feedback. He said that on the House side, “we sat down with a good group of House members including some leadership.” The reaction to those meetings and to his Wall Street Journal piece have been encouraging, he said.

Johnson’s very public style of marketing legislation, he conceded, is not how government usually operates. To someone coming from the private sector, however, as he did, “it is obvious” that lawmakers have to development a coherent message and sell their ideas to the public. At the very least, Johnson’s goal is to line up with that of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.): Lay out a vision, explain it to voters and contrast it with the president’s.

Republicans don’t control the Senate calendar. They will be faced with routine business (confirmations, the budget) that require their attention. So there is no guarantee that Johnson and his colleagues can proceed in such a methodical way. But the plan to get Republicans to focus on presenting a unified message is nevertheless important. And it may go a long way toward educating the voters that while the House has done its work, the do-nothing Senate under Sen. Harry Reid’s leadership hasn’t. At the very least, voters might figure out what Republicans believe and why the gap between their proposals and this president is essential unbridgeable.

This article was published on The Washington Post web site.

The Wall Street Journal: A 2012 Republican Strategy for Congress

By Ron Johnson

Americans are frustrated over Washington’s inability to address our nation’s economic and fiscal problems. That’s why I have been working with a growing group of senators and House members to develop a plan that can build public support for solutions. It’s called “America’s Choice.”

America’s Choice seeks to highlight the differences between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party led by President Obama. It could do so over the coming months by presenting to the country, through a series of votes in the House of Representatives, the battle between those who believe in broadest terms in limited government and freedom and those who promote government control and dependency.

What are the choices these votes could present? Growing government spending and debt or growing the private sector and reducing government. Limiting energy development or using America’s energy resources. Punishing success or pro-growth tax reform. A government takeover of health care or repealing ObamaCare and replacing it with patient-centered, free-market reforms.

The alternatives are stark. President Obama’s faith in government is so strong that he has increased its size to 24% of gross domestic product from 21%, and increased our nation’s debt by over $4 trillion. Republicans, on the other hand, believe long-term self-sustaining jobs are created in the private sector—that government cannot tax, spend and borrow our nation to prosperity.

Will green energy power America’s future? The administration has squandered billions of dollars on politically connected, green-energy boondoggle projects, while at the same time maintaining a de facto moratorium on off-shore drilling, and dragging its feet on granting permits for other energy utilization projects such as the Keystone XL Pipeline and restricting and limiting leases for offshore energy production. Republicans could propose a plan to utilize crucial domestic resources, including oil, natural gas and coal, to produce energy and create jobs.

Regulatory overreach in this administration has been breathtaking. Executive agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Labor have been in hyper-drive, adding to the already job-crushing $1.75 trillion annual cost, according to the Small Business Administration, of federal regulatory compliance. Republicans could propose a regulatory moratorium to give businesses a chance to recover, and then enact real reform to achieve common-sense regulatory balance.

President Obama has launched a divisive campaign pitting one group of Americans against another. Yet 10% of Americans already pay 70% of all income taxes. Increasing the tax burden on that group is counterproductive. Sowing class division is an act of political cynicism producing terrible economic consequences. Significant pro-growth tax reform is the better path to build our economy and create jobs.

Government takeover of our health-care system has been a liberal-progressive dream for decades. President Obama and Democrats in Congress passed the partisan Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It neither protects patients, nor does it make health care more affordable. But it will lead to a government takeover of one-sixth of our economy, and it will blow a hole in an already horribly broken budget.

Republicans are united in our commitment to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with patient-centered reforms. Malpractice tort reform, health savings account expansion, insurance purchase across state lines, reduction of government mandates, and equalized tax treatment of insurance premiums are some of the key changes we will propose to the country.

America’s Choice would clearly present two different visions of the country’s future—one represented by the Republican Party and the other represented by the Democratic Party and its leader, President Obama. Once Congress returns from recess later this month, the Republican majority in the House could focus on one major area of domestic policy at a time. For example, February could be used to debate, craft and pass an energy utilization policy.

When the House debates and passes an agenda item, Republican senators, candidates and conservative groups could concentrate on the same issue, using the same powerful facts and figures to inform and persuade the American public. Coordinating our focused efforts improves our ability to compete with the presidential bully pulpit and counteract media outlets that often work to marginalize us.

In 2011, President Obama stopped running the country and started running his re-election campaign. In his cynical attempt to divert attention away from his record by dividing us, Republicans have been put on defense. The America’s Choice agenda would put us on offense.

If done well, we just might put enough pressure on Senate Democrats and the president to actually pass legislation that will begin to solve our problems. If not, Republicans will have provided Americans with a clear choice in November.

Mr. Johnson is a Republican senator from Wisconsin.

This Op-Ed was published on The Wall Street Journal website.

Chippewa Herald: Johnson touts job creation, reduced government in Chippewa Falls visit

By Alicia Yager

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson visited SGI in Chippewa Falls Monday to tour the facility and see the company’s latest product, due to be shipped out in about a month.

Johnson received a first-hand look at SGI’s newest technology: a high-performance computer server which SGI Vice President Dick Harkness said allows for better speed and interconnectivity in systems.

Harkness said the company spent 18 months developing the server and has already seen a substantial demand for it.

“It will test our production capability,” Harkness said.

Johnson said he chose to tour SGI Monday because of its growth and success in Wisconsin, despite not being a native company.

“It’s a positive sign,” Johnson said. “It’s a company … headquartered in California that is growing (in Wisconsin).”

Johnson highlighted the need for government to decrease regulations on companies and create a more attractive business climate.

To help with his goal of reduced government, the Republican said he is currently working on a bill that would place a moratorium on new federal regulations on companies — at least until the monthly unemployment rate drops below 7.7 percent.

“We need to take the burden off of job creators,” Johnson said.

Another bill in the works for Johnson is aimed at reducing the federal workforce. For every three federal employees retiring from a position, there will only be one new rehire.

This adds into his overall goal of reducing federal government spending and resolving the country’s mounting national debt. He said every program and agency can and should be looked at for cuts, even the Department of Defense, though he added that proper national security should still be maintained.

Johnson did not specifically say if his quest to reduce federal spending would include decreased government contracts with SGI or other Chippewa County companies, but he did say companies should not focus on government funding as a business model.

Despite 2012 being a year of high-profile elections, Johnson declined to give an endorsement to either a Republican presidential candidate or anyone in the race to replace outgoing U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl.

“I’ll let voters decide,” Johnson said. “My first priority is … people that don’t want to be “president” or “senator” but will seriously work for solutions.”

This article was posted on The Chippewa Herald.