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Economy

Paul Krugman Tells GOP Senator: ‘Your Facts Are False’ On Social Security

By Adam Peck on Mar 10, 2013 at 11:51 am

During a contentious panel on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) found himself at odds with his fellow panelists — and with the facts — about Social Security’s solvency.

Johnson and fellow panelist Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) had been discussing the long-term solvency of Social Security when Johnson made the claim that the Social Security Trust Fund was a myth, and that the revenue generated from the sale of securities to the federal government somehow should not count in calculating the program’s fiscal health.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman jumped in to point out that Johnson was unwilling to accept even the most basic facts over the way Social Security is funded, all for the sake of a talking point:

KRUGMAN: You said ‘let’s start with the facts,’ but we’ve just run aground right there.

JOHNSON: Exactly my point, we have got to agree on the facts and figures.

KRUGMAN: But your facts are false…Social Security has a dedicated revenue base, it has a trust fund based on that dedicated revenue base. You can’t change the rules mid stream and say ‘oh, suddenly the trust fund doesn’t count.’ [...] It’s important to realize that the facts that are being brought out here are in fact non-facts.

Watch it:

The Social Security trust fund is solvent through 2038, and the program would almost certainly have long-term solvency were it not for the Republican-backed cap on payroll taxes for income above a certain level.

Justice

Sen. Ron Johnson Joins The Violence Against Women Act Is Unconstitutional Club

By Ian Millhiser on Feb 15, 2013 at 4:20 pm

Four senators, Jim Risch (R-ID), Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) previously suggested that any effort to prevent violence against women exceeds the federal government’s power under the Constitution. Earlier this week, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) joined their club of senators who think legislation reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act is unconstitutional:

Some Republicans have objected to new provisions in the law, including one allowing tribal courts for the first time to prosecute men who aren’t American Indians when they’re accused of abusing an American Indian woman on a reservation. . . .

[JOHNSON]: “the Senate has approved a piece of legislation that sounds nice, but which is fatally flawed. By including an unconstitutional expansion of tribal authority and introducing a bill before the Congressional Budget Office could review it to estimate its cost, Senate Democrats made it impossible for me to support a bill covering an issue I would like to address.”

In fairness to Johnson, his objection is much narrower than the one raised by senators like Paul and Cruz, and applies only the provision of the VAWA renewal that would permit tribal prosecutions against non-members of the prosecuting tribe. Nevertheless, Johnson is simply wrong about the Constitution.

It is true that the Supreme Court held back in the 1970s that tribal courts do not have criminal jurisdiction over non-Native Americans, but that decision concluded that “Indian tribes . . . give up their power to try non-Indian citizens of the United States except in a manner acceptable to Congress.” More recently, the Court’s 2004 decision in United States v. Lara recognized that Congress “does possess the constitutional power to lift the restrictions on the tribes’ criminal jurisdiction over nonmember Indians.” The reasoning of that decision would also apply to a law expanding tribal jurisdiction further to include non-Native Americans who engage in violence against women on reservations.

So Johnson is wrong about the Constitution, and his opposition to protecting Native American women is downright cruel. Eighty percent of Native American rape survivors were attacked by non-Indians, and a 2010 report by the General Accounting Office determined that federal prosecutors “declined to prosecute 46 percent of assault matters and 67 percent of sexual abuse and related matters.” As a result, many reservations are virtually law free zones for serial rapists who prey upon Native American women without consequence.

Health

Five Republicans Oppose Bipartisan Measure To Combat Human Trafficking

By Josh Israel on Feb 12, 2013 at 2:22 pm

As the Senate moves to a final vote on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), today 93 Senators endorsed an amendment to combat human trafficking. While opposing human trafficking is a fairly non-controversial subject, five far-right Republicans broke with the majority of their own caucus and opposed the bipartisan amendment.

The amendment, authored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT), strengthens VAWA by reauthorizing the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. The measure helps law enforcement investigative human trafficking and supports international efforts to stop the practice. Leahy noted that on the anniversary of President Lincoln’s birth, “we continue to fight human trafficking, which can amount to modern day slavery,” making the amendment a fitting tribute. “The United States remains a beacon of hope for so many who face human rights abuses. We know that young women and girls – often just 11, 12, or 13 years old – are being bought and sold. We know that workers are being held and forced into labor against their will. People in this country and millions around the world are counting on us.”

The amendment was opposed by Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK), James Inhofe (R-OK), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

Lee also voted against even allowing the Senate to consider the Violence Against Women Act, based on his bizarre belief that the entire bill is unconstitutional.

Prior to his time in the Senate, Johnson famously opposed the bipartisan Wisconsin Child Victims Act, a bill to extend the civil statute of limitations for child sexual abuse crimes. His objection was that it would be bad for business if employers who help cover up the crime could be “severely damaged, possibly destroyed, in a legitimate desire for justice.”

Leahy said of the the Trafficking Victims Protection Act:

This measure strengthens criminal anti-trafficking statutes to ensure that law enforcement agencies have the tools they need to effectively combat all forms of trafficking. It ensures better coordination among federal agencies, between law enforcement and victim service providers, and with foreign countries to work on every facet of this complicated problem. It includes measures to encourage victims to come forward and report this terrible crime, which leads to more prosecutions and help for more victims. We have included accountability measures to ensure that Federal funds are used for their intended purposes, and we have streamlined programs to focus scarce resources on the approaches that have been the most successful. A Senator asserted yesterday that trafficking programs have been wasteful and duplicative. In fact, the programs supported by this amendment have been carefully tracked and shown to be effective. Nonetheless, the amendment reduces authorization levels by almost a third from the levels in the last reauthorization because we are determined to ensure efficiency and respond to concerns. We have made similar efforts to streamline VAWA.

The offices of the five Senators were not immediately available to respond to questions about their rationales for opposing the amendment.

Politics

GOP Senator: Hillary Clinton Faked Emotional Outburst At Benghazi Hearing

By Aviva Shen on Jan 23, 2013 at 4:22 pm

On Wednesday morning, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave an emotional testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Benghazi terror attacks, tearing up as she described the “flag draped coffins” of the victims. Clinton lost patience when Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) pushed her on whether or not she had immediately determined the motivation of the attacks, leading the senator to accuse her of ducking questions with “theatrics.”

In an instantly viral outburst, Clinton shot back, “The fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest? Or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?”

After the hearing, Johnson complained to Buzzfeed that Clinton had planned to become emotional as a way to avoid answering questions:

I’m not sure she had rehearsed for that type of question. I think she just decided before she was going to describe emotionally the four dead Americans, the heroes, and use that as her trump card to get out of the questions. It was a good way of getting out of really having to respond to me.

Johnson also gave an interview on Milwaukee radio station WTMJ after the hearing, blasting Clinton’s “theatrics.” He speculated that “she didn’t want to answer questions so she makes a big show of it.”

Many Republicans, including former UN envoy John Bolton, accused Clinton of faking a concussion last month to avoid testifying about Benghazi. Clinton was hospitalized for several days after doctors discovered a blood clot induced by her concussion. A full 40 percent of Republicans believed Clinton’s illness was fabricated.

Politics

GOP Senator Gets Schooled On Obamacare: ‘You Lost The Election, Buddy’

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Dec 4, 2012 at 9:49 am

Political consultant Bob Shrum gave Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) a lesson in post-election politics on CNN Tuesday morning, when Shrum told the Senator to give up the dream of repealing Obamacare.

In the middle of a heated discussion about the fiscal showdown, CNN host Soledad O’Brien asked Johnson to give examples of what kind of spending cuts should be on the table. Johnson put the President’s signature health care reform law at the top of his list, saying that it costs more than people realize. “Not going to happen,” Shrum told Johnson, “You lost the election, buddy”:

JOHNSON: Let’s acknowledge that the primary driver of our debt and deficit is going to be health care costs. And we have a whole new entitlement — by the way, we’ve already got a trillion dollars of middle class, middle income tax increases cooked into the books under Obamacare. [...]

SHRUM: This is fantasy land. It’s like saying Ronald Reagan invented the Apple iPad. Obamacare is not going to be on the table. [...]

JOHNSON: Zero to 610 is the vote total of the last three votes on [Obama's] last two budgets. Zero to 610. Do you think that’s a serious proposal? Here’s the bottom line: President Obama, show us a plan.

SHRUM: He can’t show you a plan. He gave you a plan, and his plan is not to repeal Obamacare. Not going to happen. You lost the election, buddy.

Watch it:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) also proposed putting Obamacare cuts on the table. But if the goal of the fiscal showdown is to reduce the deficit, then Republicans seem to be taking the wrong approach: The Congressional Budget Office calculates that the health care law already reduces the deficit by billions of dollars in the next decade, and, in the decade after that, by more than $1 trillion.

Security

McCain: Obama Response To Libya Attack Is Worse Than Watergate

By Hayes Brown on Oct 28, 2012 at 12:16 pm

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

Before the nation even learned the full extent of an attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, Republicans raced to politicize this tragedy. GOP presidential candidate Romney released a much maligned — and entirely discredited — statement claiming President Obama “sympathize[d] with those who waged the attacks.” A month later, Romney received an embarrassing live fact check during the second presidential debate after he falsely claimed that the president did not label the attack an “act of terror” the day after it occurred.

Yet, despite the fact that their tin foil theories attacking Obama’s reaction to the Libya attack routinely embarrass the politicians who repeat them, Republicans continue to believe they can score political points off the death of an American ambassador by simply engaging in overheated rhetoric. On CBS’ Face the Nation, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) took this effort to politicize the attacks to a new level, claiming it was “either cover-up or the worst kind of incompetence”, worse even than the scandal that forced President Nixon to resign:

MCCAIN: Also, by the way, he said he immediately ordered action to be taken, no action was taken over seven hours. Now we find out the Secretary of Defense decided not to take any action. You know what, somebody the other day said to me that this is as bad as Watergate. Well, nobody died in Watergate. But this is either a massive cover-up or an incompetence that is not acceptable service to the American people.

Similar statements were made by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on other shows, all focused on the Defense Department’s supposed inaction. Watch McCain’s interview here:

The new GOP claims of cover-up are part of a long-line of attempts to label the shifting narrative as a policy failure. These latest claims build on a Fox News ‘exclusive’ that the CIA was denied a request to aid in countering the assault, while watching the attack in “real-time.” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Thursday that intelligence on the ground during the assault in Benghazi was not clear enough to warrant sending U.S. forces potentially into harms way.

Yet this new line of attack is unlikely to prove any more grounded in reality than previous ones. Indeed, even former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice tried to hit the brakes on the idea that the Obama Administration reacted improperly to the attack, telling Fox News earlier this week that “it’s probably better to let the relevant bodies do their work” rather than “jump to conclusions about what might have happened here.”

Justice

Tea Party Senator: Keeping Guns From ‘Demented Individuals’ Will ‘Restrict Our Freedoms’

By Aviva Shen on Jul 22, 2012 at 10:57 am

Responding to the tragic shooting in Colorado during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said he would oppose gun control efforts that could be used to “restrict our freedoms” and instead suggested arming “responsible” people to combat “sick, demented individuals who want to do harm.”

Johnson also argued that any additional measures to restrict large gun magazines that carry 100 rounds of ammunition — similar to the high-capacity clip that the alleged Colorado shooter employed — would infringe on Americans’ Second Amendment rights:

JOHNSON: People will talk about unusually lethal weapons, that could be potentially a discussion you could have. But the fact of the matter is there are 30-round magazines that are just common. You simply can’t keep these weapons out of the hands of sick, demented individuals who want to do harm. And when you try to do it, you restrict our freedoms.

Watch it:

Johnson’s statement was in direct opposition to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who came on the program to call for a renewed assault weapons ban. “I believe people use these weapons because they can get them,” she said. “I believe that a revolver, a rifle, a hand gun isn’t going to do the damage. It’s the big clips, a hundred rounds. You can’t get to him to dislodge the gun because he can fire so rapidly and has so many bullets.”

Johnson disagreed and argued that the assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004 and banned high-capacity magazines, actually made things worse in the Aurora shooting. “If a responsible individual had been carrying a weapon, maybe, maybe they could have prevented some of those deaths, some of those injuries,” he said.

Politics

Top Romney Surrogate: Investing In Green Energy Is Turning America Into The Soviet Union

By Igor Volsky on Jul 17, 2012 at 9:18 am

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson (R), a Mitt Romney campaign surrogate, compared the government’s investment in failed energy company Solyndra to the Soviet Union and Cuba, during an appearance on CNN’s Starting Point this Tuesday.

“President Obama simply doesn’t understand that it’s the free enterprise systems, the private sector, the productive sector, not the government sector that creates long-term self-sustaining jobs,” Johnson declared. “Take a look at the Soviet Union, Venezuela’s economic basket case, and is anybody moving to the island paradise of Cuba?”

The comments perplexed host Soledad O’Brien, who pressed Johnson to clarify the comparison:

O’BRIEN: You’re surely not suggesting that the idea and the concept behind Solyndra and other green energies like Solyndra is comparable to the Soviet Union and Cuba, right?

JOHNSON: No, I am suggesting that, because when you take taxpayer money and you invest that into businesses, that’s the taxpayer money put at risk. And let’s face it, the lesson of the Soviet Union and other socialist nations is that governments are very poor allocators of capital. It’s an economic model that doesn’t work.

O’BRIEN: Didn’t it work in Massachusetts? Isn’t that exactly what Governor Romney did in Massachusetts in green energy when he was the governor of Massachusetts?

JOHNSON: Listen, the path we need to take this country on is with free enterprise system, the private sector that creates long term self-sustaining jobs and that’s exactly what Governor Romney would do as President Romney.

Watch it:

Romney has repeatedly reiterated his debunked claims that Solyndra’s bankruptcy symbolized the corruption and cronyism of the Obama administration, despite his own efforts as governor of Massachusetts to secure state loans for green developers that later went belly up.

Health

Senator Says Employers Should Be Able To Deny Coverage To Cancer Patients Because ‘Our Nation Was Based On Freedom’

By Scott Keyes on Jun 28, 2012 at 2:10 pm

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Businesses should be allowed to deny health insurance to cancer patients, according to a Republican senator, because “our nation was based on the foundation of freedom and limited government.”

Discussing health care outside the Supreme Court today, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told ThinkProgress that there “shouldn’t” be a law requiring businesses to cover employees who have cancer because that would “create an obligation” for others. “When you create a right for somebody,” Johnson said, “you create an obligation for somebody else, and then you’re taking away that person’s right.”

KEYES: I know Richard Murdock had said even though businesses should give people, for instance, with cancer, health coverage, they shouldn’t be legally required by the federal government.

JOHNSON: They shouldn’t. Listen, our rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And when we start expanding beyond that realm, when you create a right for somebody, you create an obligation for somebody else, and then you’re taking away that person’s right. And that maybe doesn’t seem all that great, but it’s just true. Our nation was based on the foundation of freedom and limited government.

Watch it:

Under Obamacare, health insurance companies cannot deny people health insurance because of a pre-existing condition like cancer. Johnson remains strongly opposed to the law.

Unfortunately, he is not the first person to suggest that businesses should be permitted to deny insurance to cancer patients. Last week, Indiana Republican Senate nominee Richard Mourdock similarly argued that employers should be allowed to deny coverage to cancer patients “if they want to keep their health care costs down.”

Steven Perlberg contributed to this report.

Election

GOP Senator Endorses George Allen, Who Voted For Trillions In Debt, Claiming He Would Change ‘Debt Culture’

By Josh Israel on Apr 20, 2012 at 1:58 pm

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) will endorse and campaign with former Sen. George Allen (R-VA) today, as Allen seeks to regain the Senate seat he lost in 2006 after his infamous bullying of an Indian-American campaign tracker whom he called “macaca.” In an email obtained by Roll Call, Johnson — who oversees Senate Republican message and agenda coordination — explains that he supports Allen because, “We must change the spending and debt culture in Washington.”

In his lone Senate term, Allen voted for about $4.4 trillion in discretionary spending appropriations, 52,000 earmarks, and four debt limit increases. He also backed George W. Bush’s massive tax cuts for the rich, which exploded the deficit.

In all, the public debt increased by about three trillion dollars — more than 51 percent — during Allen’s tenure, making him the last person Johnson should trust to change the spending and debt culture.

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