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 Yet, few bills are passed to eliminate outdated, duplicative, unnecessary, inefficient, wasteful, or low-priority programs.”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 But when was the last time Congress and the president acted on bills, as these five senators put it, “to eliminate outdated, duplicative, unnecessary, inefficient, wasteful, or low-priority programs”?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.

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.”

Green Bay Press Gazette: Sen. Ron Johnson says he won’t support tax increases in a fiscal cliff deal

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh says he will not support increasing taxes to avoid heading over the fiscal cliff.

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders met Friday to discuss the pending fiscal crisis, and both sides say they’re confident they’ll reach an agreement before the end of the year.

Johnson said he supports raising revenue, but only through economic growth.

“(I don’t support) punishing success by increasing tax rates,” Johnson said. “It won’t work, it’s counterproductive. It’s not even close to fixing the problem. I do not know that of a tax increase that helps grow the economy or create a job.”

Raising taxes on earners making $250,000 or more is not a solution, he said.

“(People say) ‘Are you willing to compromise?’ Well, absolutely, but I actually have to see a plan from the other side to see what I’m compromising with,” Johnson said.

“But (Democrats) haven’t put a legit plan on the table….I do not want any part in pushing the economy over the fiscal cliff.”

If Obama and Speaker of the House U.S. Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, do not reach an agreement in deficit reduction, the country will head over what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake termed the “fiscal cliff,” more than $1 trillion in automatic cuts to domestic and military spending over the next decade.

Heading over the fiscal cliff also means automatic tax increases, including the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. If the country does head over the cliff, analysts predict that the $770 billion in cuts and tax increases in 2013 alone will be too much, too soon for the fragile economy.

Article appeared in the Green Bay Press Gazette

The Weekly Standard: Senators Continue to Push for Information on the Benghazi Terror Attack

Six U.S. senators continue to push officials in the Obama administration for information related to the 9/11 Benghazi terror attack. In a statement released just before the weekend, Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte, Rob Portman, Saxby Chambliss, and Ron Johnson, all Republicans, say Defense Secretary Leon Panetta isn’t revealing why there were not sufficient forces ready to protect endangered Americans.

“Over the past month, we and our colleagues have sent 13 separate letters to senior Administration officials, including President Obama, seeking an explanation for why no U.S. armed forces were available to go to the aid of the four American citizens who died during the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi,” write the senators in a joint statement. “Today, we finally received from the Secretary of Defense the first response to our many letters. Unfortunately, Secretary Panetta’s letter only confirms what we already knew – that there were no forces at a sufficient alert posture in Europe, Africa or the Middle East to provide timely assistance to our fellow citizens in need in Libya. The letter fails to address the most important question – why not?”

The senators contend that since the day of the attack was September 11, defense forces should have been at the ready.

“This question is all the more puzzling considering that the attack in Benghazi occurred on the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in American history – a day when we know that our enemies around the world are plotting and planning to hit us again,” write the senators. “Furthermore, the attack was only the latest in a series of assaults against Western interests in Benghazi, including an attempted assassination of the British Ambassador and two previous attacks on our consulate in Benghazi this year. It was for this reason that U.S. security professionals on the ground in Libya had made repeated requests for additional personnel and security assistance.”

They conclude:

“In short, we knew that our enemies wanted to hit us in Benghazi. They had already tried on at least two occasions. The most glaring example can be found in the August cables from the Embassy in Tripoli to the State Department. Our own people on the ground were concerned about the threat. And yet, on the one day out of the year – September 11 – when the threat level is perhaps the highest, the military was not in a position to come quickly to the aid of Americans under attack in Benghazi.

“We reiterate our requests to the President, the Director of National Intelligence, the Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security, and the Attorney General, to level with the American people and tell us what happened and why these four brave Americans were not better protected.

Article appeared in The Weekly Standard