Op-Ed: Obama, Democrats not serious about passing budget

By Senator Ron Johnson

Editor’s note: U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, is a member of the Senate Budget Committee.

The U.S. government is the largest financial entity in the world. Nothing else comes close.

On Sunday, April 29, it will be exactly three years since the U.S. Senate passed a budget.

If you own or work for a small business that has a loan from a bank, I’m quite sure your business has a budget — and a rather detailed budget at that. Every year around tax time, many American families sit down to fill out tax forms, estimate their income, and set spending priorities for the upcoming year. It’s the responsible thing to do.

And yet, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid appears to believe it is not necessary for the Senate to fulfill its legal responsibility by debating and passing a budget to account for $3.8 trillion in federal spending next fiscal year, $15.6 trillion of debt and, according to figures produced by the Senate Budget Committee Republican staff, more than $65 trillion in additional unfunded liabilities.

To provide some perspective to these incomprehensible numbers, the total net private asset base — that is, the net value of all household assets, small business assets, and large business assets — of the United States is $82 trillion, according to figures from the Federal Reserve Flow of Funds Account from March 8, 2012.

Even worse, President Barack Obama and his administration seem to view budgeting as just one more political maneuver. His efforts have been so completely unserious that the President’s 2012 budget was rejected by a vote of 97-0 in the Senate. And three weeks ago, when Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-South Carolina, sponsored a budget proposal based on Obama’s 2013 budget plan, it lost in the House by a vote of 414-0.

That’s right, not a single member of Congress cast a vote in favor of Obama’s last two budgets. That is a stunning repudiation of his leadership. What it really represents is a total abdication of leadership.

Democrats in the Senate have all the votes they need to pass a real budget and show the American people their plan for today and the future. But they refuse, because they don’t want to be held accountable. They would rather cut backroom deals that hide the details of their plans, and then take political pot shots at Republicans who have had the courage to produce and vote for a serious budget.

Democrats claim that last year’s Budget Control Act is an adequate substitute for a real budget because it “deems” spending caps. Obviously, it is not. It is only half the equation. It includes no plan for saving Social Security or Medicare, for reforming taxes, or for ever living within our means. But it does prove that Washington is certainly good at making sure spending continues.

Business owners and consumers all over America are watching Washington, shaking their heads in disgust, and holding on to their wallets. These are the people we need to get our economy moving again, but these are the very people that are under assault by Obama and his policies.

The Obama administration’s agencies are regulating business to death, limiting the use of America’s domestic energy resources, threatening to punish success by increasing tax burdens, and providing no credible plan for reining in our debt and deficit. As self-defeating as all of these policies have been, not having a credible long-term budget plan might prove to be the most harmful.

For the 30 years from 1970 through 1999, the average borrowing cost of the U.S. government was 5.3%, according to an analysis made by my staff of figures from the Office of Management and Budget. During that period, the ratio of our debt to our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) averaged 47% and never exceeded 67%. We were a far more creditworthy nation back then than we are today.

Now our debt-to-GDP ratio exceeds 100%, and over the last three years, America’s borrowing cost has been kept at an artificially low rate of 1.5%. How long can that last? Nobody knows.

What we do know is that if our borrowing costs were to revert to the 1970-through-1999 average of 5.3%, America’s annual interest expense would increase by $600 billion — an amount that equals 50% of discretionary spending.

Out of our $3.8 trillion annual budget, only $1.3 trillion is discretionary spending subject to appropriation and some level of control. Everything else, roughly $2.5 trillion, is mandatory and entitlement spending that is on automatic pilot — with no requirement to ensure financial solvency of these programs.

This is unsustainable. Increased interest expense resulting from higher rates, the true cost of Obamacare, and reduced revenues from slower economic growth caused by uncertainty and lack of confidence, all significantly raise the risk of dramatically higher debt and deficits. Employer surveys by McKinsey, as well as analysis by former Congressional Budget Office Director Holtz-Eakin, show that far more Americans will lose employer-provided care than CBO estimates. Additionally, Congress is unlikely to implement the hundreds of billions in Medicare cuts that are called for in the president’s health care law

It is past time for Obama, and his allies in Congress, to show the American people a credible plan to address our looming financial crisis. It is time for Senate Democrats to pass a budget.

Published on CNN.com

Townhall.com: President Obama’s Budget and Good Faith Negotiations

Kevin Glass, Managing Director

Guy covered most of the president’s budget earlier today, but something that’s important to emphasize over and over is this: Obama does not and never had the desire to pass this budget.

This budget is a political document that likely won’t be treated seriously even by the Democrats on Capitol Hill. I chatted with Senator Ron Johnson at CPAC, and he reminds us that Obama’s last budget lost 97-0 in the Senate. Sen. Johnson also outlined why he doesn’t think the President is negotiating in good faith with Republicans, and which Democrats it might be possible to work across the aisle with.

Even the liberal Talking Points Memo admits that this is just a wish list of goodies for Obama to shore up his liberal base supporters:

Though required by law, White House budgets are largely political documents that tend to become more and more political as reelection time gets closer and closer.

This year’s will technically be no different — but the long-term stakes will be much higher than they usually are and clarifying that fact for voters will be key to President Obama’s appeal in 2012.

This article was published on Townhall.com.

The Hill: Sen. Johnson: Obama ‘not someone we can compromise with’

By Josiah Ryan

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) on Thursday, proclaimed that under the Obama presidency the United States had reached a low level of socialism.

The freshman senator, who was speaking to a group of conservaties in Washington,  explained that U.S. federal spending was nearing levels seen in countries whose economies are on the brinkg – like Greece and Italy.

“Congratulations America! We have arrived at the lower level of European socialism!” he said, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Friday.

“President Obama is not someone we can compromise with,” he continued, speaking at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington DC. “President Obama is someone we must defeat.”

Johnson, who is new to Washington, has made a name for himself in the 112th Congress as staunch conservative willing to wield the Senate’s procedural tools to bring to protest Democrats’ leadership of the upper chamber.

Obama is “not working with us in good faith,” said Johnson. He is “just running for re-election.”

This article was published on The Hill.

ACLJ: Senator Johnson: ObamaCare “Greatest Assault on Freedom in our Lifetimes”

By Matthew Clark

Senator Ron Johnson (WI) says that ObamaCare is the “greatest assault on freedom in our lifetimes.” In fact, it is the reason he got involved in politics in the first place.

I spoke with Senator Johnson at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, DC, regarding ObamaCare. He is thankful for groups like the ACLJ who are actively engaged in the fight against this law at the Supreme Court.

He is “concerned” about the practical effect that ObamaCare will have on our national debt and deficit, plunging our nation down a dangerous road.

He is spearheading an effort to urge the CBO to revise its estimates on the cost of President Obama’s healthcare law. He said that if you take an honest assessment of the law, it gives employers the choice between paying upwards of $15,000 for an employee’s health insurance or pay a $2,000 fine. He noted that employers would not be leaving their employees totally in the cold, because ObamaCare creates special eligibilities for such employees.

He said that “according to employer surveys” 30 to 50 percent of employers will do the math and drop coverage for their employees. And with nearly 180 million American’s dependant on employer-provided insurance, that could leave 90 million Americans without healthcare and in need of government subsidized health insurance.

When this happens, it will cost American taxpayers, not the CBO estimated 100 billion dollars, but up to 1 trillion dollars.

Senator Johnson believes that ObamaCare was “designed to create a single payer system,” and that ObamaCare itself is just the “tip of the iceberg.”

It is not just the cost that worries the Senator, he is very “concerned” about the affect this law will have on the quality of care available to all Americans.

So what can be done about ObamaCare?

Senator Johnson believes that in addition to battling it at the Supreme Court, there are practical things that can be done in Congress and the U.S. Senate.

He told me that if Republicans win the Senate he believes that through reconciliation, which is how ObamaCare became law in the first place, and especially through the budget process, serous steps can be taken to “knock it down.”

The ACLJ is taking action as well. Just yesterday we filed our latest amicus brief with the Supreme Court representing 119 Members of Congress and over 100,000 Americans.

This article was published on the ACLJ website.

The Daily Caller: Sen. Johnson: it’s a ‘national scandal’ that Democrats won’t pass a budget

By Alexis Levinson

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that President Obama has no opinion on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s assessment that not having a budget creates uncertainty and could damage the economy.

That should be a “national scandal,” according to Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who lambasted Senate Democrats and Obama for not attempting to pass a budget.

Johnson asked Bernanke at a Tuesday hearing if not passing a federal budget was a problem, even though there were spending caps in place from the Budget Control Act.

“Is uncertainty about the future of the tax code, government programs and so on a negative for growth?” said Bernanke at the Senate Budget Committee hearing. “I think it is, because firms like to have certainty, like to be able to plan.”

Carney was asked by Jake Tapper of ABC News about that comment, and whether the president agrees with Bernanke, or with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has said it is not necessary to pass a budget this year.

“I have no opinion, the White House has no opinion on Chairman Bernanke’s assessment of how the Senate ought to do it’s business,” said Carney. “What the president believes is important is that the Budget Control Act that was signed into law last year provides the top line spending caps for the coming budget and he will obviously meet those in the budget proposal he puts forward.”

Johnson didn’t appreciate Carney’s remark.

“It should be a national scandal to think that the largest national entity in the world doesn’t even have a national budget,” said Johnson, “and one American party is afraid to show the American public what their plan to solve the debt and deficit issue is. It’s really jaw dropping.”

If it were a Republican-controlled Senate, Johnson opined, all the news outlets would be furiously covering the story.

“The comparison I would make is during the Iran Hostage Crisis, every national news outlet had a counter of the number of days that Americans were being held hostage in Iran. If we were a Republican senate, that’d be about the same thing –you’d see that 1,015 days behind newscasters,” Johnson said. “But nobody’s making a big deal because it’s a Senate controlled by Democrats.”

“The president, you can say, sure, he put a budget on the table, but it lost zero to 97 in the Senate last year, so the Senate Democrats haven’t had to put their fingers on any kind of financial plan at all when we’re sitting here running 1.4, 1.3, 1.3 trillion dollar deficits every year,” Johnson went on. “I think it’s outrageous. And I’m certainly trying to do everything I possibly can to draw the American public’s attention to that fact.”

“The president talks about being for the grand bargain,” added Johnson. “I’ve never seen it. And of course nobody has seen it because it doesn’t exist. It only exists in people’s imagination.”

A Republican aide had a similar take on the issue.

“When the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is telling us the lack of a budget — a long-term fiscal plan to get off our current path to a debt crisis — is harming the economy right now, one would think that would cause the White House concern. But apparently it doesn’t have an opinion,” said the aide.

This article was published on The Daily Caller.

The Hill: Johnson threatens Senate filibuster over lack of budget

By Josiah Ryan

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.