Senator Ron Johnson Endorses Mitt Romney on Meet The Press
NBC’s Savannah Guthrie: “And joining me live from Milwaukee is Wisconsin’s freshman Republican Senator Ron Johnson. He was elected with strong Tea Party support in 2010. And until this morning has remained uncommitted in the Republican presidential race. So Senator, I know you’re here to break news this morning. Throw your support behind a candidate. So, without further ado, who will you be supporting?”
Senator Ron Johnson: “Mitt Romney and good morning, Savannah. I’m the business guy from Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I have 33 years’ experience in the private sector. I’ve been in Washington now for 15 months. I certainly understand a big part of our problem is the fact that this president and members of his administration have no private sector experience whatsoever. And Governor Romney has 25 years of experience in the private sector, plus, he has executive experience in government. And I never did intend to endorse anybody but I’ve had the opportunity to meet with Governor Romney over the last couple weeks, have long phone conversations with him. I’ve come away from those conversations fully convinced that Governor Romney is the person to lead our party, to lead our nation. He fully understands the gravity of our financial situation. He’s dedicated toward solving those problems. He is ready, willing and able to lead this nation, unlike President Obama. So today I’m happy to announce my full support and my endorsement of Governor Romney to be the next President of the United States. I’m looking forward to working with Governor Romney and his team in my new role. I’ve been asked by Leader McConnell to lead an effort, coordinate our agenda and our message in the House, the Senate, with our presidential candidate, so that we can communicate to the voters of America, the very clear choice in our approach. We actually want to rely on the private sector. We know that it’s freedom in the free market system versus President Obama’s approach, growing government, growing government intrusion in our lives. I’m looking forward to making sure that President Obama is a one-term president.”
Politico: Sen. Ron Johnson says ‘last shred of freedom’ at stake in health law case
By: Tim Mak
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) argued Tuesday that at stake in Supreme Court proceedings over health care reform is nothing short of “our one last shred of freedom.”
“Let me answer why I think Americans just instinctively understand that this law shouldn’t go forward. It’s because they realize government has no capability of controlling one sixth of our economy. And they also realize that what’s at stake here is our last shred of freedom,” said Johnson on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“If the federal government can actually force an American to engage in a particular form of commerce – buy health care so they can regulate it, that’s the final shred of freedom,” said the Wisconsin Republican. “Our freedom is shrinking.”
Johnson said that this would be the first time that the government has forced individuals to purchase something or engage in commerce.
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a special adviser for health policy at the White House OMB and the brother of former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, challenged that assertion.
“George Washington required American households to have a gun,” Emanuel noted. “The Supreme Court has required people to get vaccinated against what they wanted.”
A robust debate then erupted over the issue of whether the health care reforms passed in the 111th Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama would lead to greater costs and a centralized state.
“The health care reform isn’t about a centralized state,” argued Emanuel.
“15,000 pages worth? Already 15,000 pages, and they’ve only begun,” responded Johnson. “It’s going to fail.”
“The fact that this is going to reduce the deficit is a total fiction. This is going to cost trillions of dollars and we simply can’t afford it. We’re already bankrupting this country,” continued Johnson.
calendarOp-Ed: ObamaCare’s Costs Are Soaring
We already know the rosy budget estimates used to sell the law were wrong.
By RON JOHNSON
One year after the passage of ObamaCare, this paper published an op-ed I wrote (“ObamaCare and Carey’s Heart”) about how America’s health-care system saved my daughter’s life, and describing how implementing this law will limit innovation, lead to rationing, and lower the quality of care. Now, two years out, I would like to focus on the budgetary disaster.
As a candidate, Barack Obama repeatedly claimed that his health-care plan would lower annual family health-insurance premiums by $2,500 before the end of his first term as president. But the Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported that the average family premium has increased $2,200 since the start of this administration.
Then there is the higher cost to taxpayers. The CBO’s initial estimate in March 2010 of ObamaCare’s budget impact showed it saving money, reducing the federal deficit by $143 billion in the first 10 years. But that positive estimate was largely the product of gimmicks inserted into the bill by Democratic leaders to hide the law’s true cost.
Sure enough, the administration last October announced it would not implement one of those gimmicks, a long-term care program called the Class Act, because it was financially unworkable. The loss of the premiums that would be collected to finance the Class Act wiped out $70 billion of the supposed deficit reduction projected by CBO. And last month the administration’s proposed fiscal 2013 budget included $111 billion in additional spending for the premium subsidies in the health law’s insurance exchanges—further eroding any confidence in the original ObamaCare projections.
This would not be the first time a government program exceeded its projected cost. When Medicare was passed in 1965, for example, the federal government estimated it would cost $12 billion in 1990. Medicare actually cost $110 billion in 1990.
In the case of ObamaCare, one of the principal sources of the lowball estimate used to justify the law is related to the insurance exchanges. The CBO originally estimated that one million Americans would lose their employer-sponsored care and be forced into the exchanges.
But a McKinsey & Co. study in June 2011 showed that 30%-50% of employers plan to stop offering health insurance to their employees once the health law is implemented in 2014. Last week the CBO breezily dismissed this and other studies on the ground that “it is doubtful that any survey conducted today could provide very accurate predictions of employers’ future decisions.”
As someone who purchased group health insurance for over 31 years, I fully understand why the McKinsey study is more credible than the CBO.
Why? Because the decision employers face under ObamaCare is straightforward: Do they pay $20,000 per year for family coverage, or do they pay the $2,000 penalty to the government?
It is not as if dropping health coverage will expose their employees to financial risk. They will thereby make employees eligible for huge subsidies in the health-care exchanges—$10,000 if their household income is $64,000 per year. In a competitive environment, ObamaCare provides the incentive for employers to drop coverage.
According to the CBO, 154 million Americans are covered under employer-sponsored plans. What would be the cost to taxpayers if 50% of those individuals lost their coverage and became eligible for subsidies? The answer is difficult to calculate, but CBO’s answer is basically: Don’t worry, revenues will increase automatically to cover those costs (for example, employees’ taxable incomes will increase when they lose employer-provided coverage).
In reality, as government assumes a greater share of health-care costs, pressure to cut payments to providers will be enormous. Reduced government reimbursements to providers will cause massive cost-shifting to those remaining in the private health-insurance market. More employees will lose coverage. Before long, we will have what the left has long sought—a single payer health-care system modeled after Medicaid.
In recent testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told me that America’s health insurance system is in a “death spiral.” She failed to acknowledge that implementation of ObamaCare will be the cause of that death spiral, and American taxpayers will be left to pick up the tab.
In a June 2009 speech to the American Medical Association, Mr. Obama promised: “If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan. Period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” I’m not sure what you would call that statement, but whatever you call it, it was a doozy.
Mr. Johnson, a Republican, is a senator from Wisconsin.
Published in Wall Street Journal.
calendarHuman Events: The ObamaCare death spiral continues
No one in the Administration has a clue what’s happening.
by John Hayward
Last week, after Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius claimed the private insurance market was in a “death spiral” long before ObamaCare came along, I pointed out that ObamaCare itself is the paramount modern example of a high-speed death spiral. Whatever one might say about the structural deficiencies of private health insurance – which are, in no small part, due to government interference – it’s taken decades for them to reach their current state. ObamaCare, by contrast, began falling apart the minute it passed. Literally billions of dollars have been dropping from its leprous bulk with every passing month.
Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) of the Senate Budget Committee had the same idea, and decided to question Our Lady of the Death Spiral about it when she appeared before the Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday, leading to the following hilarious and terrifying exchange:
In the course of a few minutes, Sebelius – who will become one of the most powerful officials on Earth, once ObamaCare is fully up and running – concedes that ObamaCare’s funding mechanisms are collapsing, its costs are ballooning out of control, and it has driven the cost of insurance for American families up instead of reducing them, and she has absolutely no idea what it’s going to do to the federal budget deficit.
Give Obama four more years, and his team will do even more wonderful things that nobody understands, at a cost no one can calculate!
Article published on Human Events.
calendarU.S. Sen. Ron Johnson talks politics with Oakfield High School students
A small group of students at Oakfield High School that studies current political leaders had a chance to interact with one Monday when U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson paid a visit.
Johnson, who also visited a class Monday morning at Waters Elementary School in Fond du Lac, said he thoroughly enjoys his time with students.
He told the Oakfield students he hoped they appreciated what their teachers were doing to help them lead successful lives.
“I hope you appreciate what this country offers you,” he said referring to the unlimited opportunities before the students. “America is something precious.”
Karl McCarty, who teaches history and political science at Oakfield High School, invites politicians to speak with his class as a way to show students that politicians are human. Recently, the class hosted U.S. Rep. Thomas Petri, R-Fond du Lac. Monday marked the first time McCarty and his students met with Johnson.
Be happy
Sam Hounsell, a 17-year-old junior at Oakfield, said his family members have been involved in local and federal politics — something he also has a strong interest in.
Hounsell said he took note of Johnson’s advice to be happy with what you choose as a career in life.
Johnson said work does not seem like work if it’s something you enjoy. He told the students success would find those that are good at something they enjoy.
“There’s no point in being a big millionaire if you’re unhappy,” said Hounsell, who is thinking about pursuing a career as a corrections officer.
He said he “can’t wait” to be able to vote.
“I’m not happy with the federal government right now,” Hounsell said.
Earlier, he asked Johnson about his stance on mining.
“We have to utilize our natural resources,” Johnson said. “We need jobs.”
Johnson said he gets his water from a well, that he is a fisherman and loves a pristine environment. He said he doesn’t believe people are seeking to pollute the environment.
Lea Moore, a senior at Oakfield, said she enjoys McCarty’s class because it delves into political matters.
Like Hounsell, she said Johnson’s message about doing something that makes you happy made sense to her.
She said she intends to attend college to become an alcohol and drug abuse counselor.
Issues
Student Braden Ryan asked Johnson his thoughts about the future of small, family farms.
Though there is nostalgia for survival of smaller farms, Johnson said some will be lost and others will survive.
He likened it to the emergence of Walmart and Home Depot stores. Though people like the “mom and pop” stores, many people shop at the chain stores, he said.
McCarty asked Johnson who he favored as a potential Republican presidential candidate.
Johnson discussed how Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are portrayed in the press, but declined to endorse any of the four. He did say any of the GOP candidates would be better than President Barack Obama — a president he said ran and was elected on a message of hope and change.
“That (hope and change) was an empty vessel filled by the people that voted for him — their hopes and dreams,” Johnson said.
Johnson spent part of the class talking about fiscal trouble facing the nation and what it may mean for students and future generations.
In September 1987, he said, the national debt was $2.3 trillion.
“Right now, it’s $15.4 trillion,” he said. “In another 10 years it’s projected at $25 to $26 trillion.”
Johnson also spoke of his frustration with the Obama administration’s lack of a plan to fix Medicare and Social Security.
“It’s been four years and he hasn’t done anything (with it),” Johnson said, adding that the president’s “Obamacare” healthcare plan set to go into effect in 2014 will cost much more than projected.
When asked if there was anyone he wished had run for president, Johnson mentioned Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and Wisconsin Sen. Paul Ryan.
Classroom lessons
McCarty is no stranger to politics.
In 2004, McCarty was elected to the Campbellsport Board of Education at the age of 21. He ran an unsuccessful bid for the Assembly in 2008.
A St. Kilian native, he has been an instructor at Oakfield for five years, the past three full time.
McCarty said he encourages his students to discuss why political leaders say what they say.
“We take a lot of pride in being civil,” he said, noting that the students have learned to respectfully disagree with each other.
Today, the group planned to talk about Johnson’s visit and his remarks.
“The kids need to learn the (political) process is an easy one to participate in,” McCarty said. “I think sometimes people think it’s hard to be part of politics.”
This article was published on FondduLacReporter.com
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