Ron Johnson's Senate Speech, June 28 (Video, Transcript)

UPDATE, June 30, 2011: Harry Reid cancels Senate July 4 recess
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UPDATE, June 29, 2011: Johnson vows to fight any attempt in Senate to proceed with Fourth of July recess

Freshman Sen. Ron Johnson said Wednesday he will try to block any move by the Senate to recess tomorrow in advance of the Fourth of July holiday, saying lawmakers should remain in session to work on the budget and spending issues.

Johnson’s comments come a day after he took to the Senate floor vowing to block regular business unless Democrats advance a budget plan.

“We’re just trying to ratchet up the pressure on Democratic leadership, who controls what we do by and large,” the Oshkosh Republican said in an interview. “I’m doing this to make a point, to make sure we start turning our attention to the budget.”

...Johnson was joined by nine GOP colleagues at a press conference Wednesday demanding the Senate stay in session.

It is so refreshing to finally have someone like Ron Johnson representing me in the U.S. Senate.

What a tremendous improvement over Russ Feingold!

Ron Johnson presents real hope and change.
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Ron Johnson isn't satisfied with business as usual in Washington.

He may be new in the U.S. Senate but he isn't afraid to shake things up.

He knows changes are needed in Washington. He wants to be part of the solution.

Video of Johnson speaking on the floor of the Senate, June 28, 2011:



Transcript:

SENATOR RON JOHNSON: “Mr. President, I ask to be allowed to speak for up to ten minutes.

“Thank you.

“Mr. President, I've been here for almost six months now.

“But I've been carefully watching Washington for more than 32 years, while operating my manufacturing business in Oshkosh, Wisconsin - watching how increasingly broken Washington has become over the years.

“Nothing I've seen in the last six months changes that evaluation.

“Washington is broken and America is going broke.

“Our economy is in a coma; people are suffering.

“America hungers for leadership, and it it’s not getting any - not from President Obama, not from the United States Senate.

“We can't afford to have a broken political process - not now - not while America is hurtling toward a financial crisis.

“Under Democratic leadership, it has been over two years since the United States Senate has passed a budget, and there is currently no mark-up going on in the Budget Committee to produce one.

“America is going bankrupt, and the Senate refuses to pass a budget.

“The President's budget - the one he presented several months ago to great fanfare, remember that? It was 4 ¼ inches thick, 2,400 pages long. Who knows how many thousands of man hours that document took to produce? It was going to be the solution to our fiscal problems.

“But it was so unserious, it would have added over $12 trillion to our nation’s debt.

“It was so unserious, when it was voted on in the United States Senate, it lost by a vote of ZERO to 97.

“It was so unserious, that not a single member of the President's own party voted for it.

“Instead of rolling up his shirt sleeves and personally tackling the number one problem facing this nation right from the beginning, President Obama delegated his role in sporadic negotiations to Vice President Biden.

“Now that those talks have broken down, the President is finally getting personally involved in this process.

“But what kind of process is this – a few people, talking behind closed doors, far from the view of the American public? Is that the process that is going to decide the fate of America’s financial situation, of our financial future? Is this how our government is supposed to work?

“I don’t think so.

“Of course not.

“Unfortunately, this has become business as usual in Washington.

“As a manufacturer, I know if the process is bad, the product will be bad.

“Business as usual here in Washington is a bad process.

“Business as usual is bankrupting America.

“It must stop.

“America is simply too precious to subject our financial future to Washington’s ‘business as usual.’

“Now I'm pretty new here, and I don't pretend to understand everything that makes the Senate work (or maybe more accurately, doesn’t allow the Senate to work). But I do know the Senate runs on something called unanimous consent.

“So unless we receive some assurance from the Democrat leadership that we will actually start addressing our budget out in the open, in the bright light of day - I will begin to object. I will begin to withhold my consent.

“The Senate needs to pass a budget. It shouldn't be that difficult.

“Families do it every day. A husband earns $40,000. A wife earns $40,000. Their total family income is $80,000. That's their budget. That's what they can afford to spend. American families figure out how to live within their means.

“The federal government should be no different. A budget is a number. We should first pick one number, and then a set of numbers, that won't let America go bankrupt.

“So let me start the process by throwing out a number: $2.6 trillion. This is $800 billion more than we spent just 10 years ago. That is the amount that President Obama, in his budget, says the federal government will receive in revenue next year. If we only spent that amount of money, we would be living within our means. What a concept, huh?

“If we want to spend more than $2.6 trillion, Members of Congress and members of this Administration should go before Congressional committees and openly justify what they want to spend, how much they want to borrow, and how much debt they are willing to pile on the backs of our children, our grandchildren, and our great grandchildren.

“They should explain just how much of our children’s future they are willing to mortgage.

“The American people deserve to be told the truth.

“Unless that happens, I will begin to withhold my consent.

“Unless there is some assurance that the Senate will take up its budget responsibilities in an open process, I will begin to object.

“Madame President, I note the absence of a quorum.”

I'm so glad we sent Ron Johnson to the Senate.

Osama: Obama, Democrats - Hypocrites

I've had enough of the Democrats and the Leftists strutting around praising Obama for HIS success in achieving the death of Osama bin Laden.

For years, they attacked and attempted to undermine President George W. Bush and the Bush administration. They vehemently objected to the methods utilized to deal with the terrorist threat and protect us.

Their assault was relentless, accusing President Bush and Vice President Cheney of being war criminals.

WATERBOARDING.

ENHANCED INTERROGATION.

SECRET PRISONS.

WARRANTLESS WIRETAPPING.

Obama was adamant about closing Guantanamo Bay.

He and the Democrats opposed the very methods that allowed for bin Laden to be killed.

Here's a sampling of video, via Mark Levin:

FORMER Sen. Russ Feingold lies and rails against collecting intelligence.



David Gregory lectures President Bush on the interrogation bill.



Matt Lauer accuses President Bush of using illegal methods to obtain information.



Obama signs his first executive order - to close Gitmo.

OBAMA: Guantanamo will be closed no later than one year from now.

Of course, that didn't happen.



Dick Cheney defends President Bush and the interrogation methods used to protect the country. This is must-see.



Obama chastises Dick Cheney for objecting to Obama's plan to close Gitmo.



Obama says he "fundamentally disagrees with Dick Cheney."

So, Obama and his Democrat comrades mercilessly attacked the Bush administration, while now they're hoping to take sole credit for getting bin Laden, and wallowing in the news of his death.

It's absurd.

It's a disgrace.

Democrat Gwen Moore wanted President Bush impeached.

Yesterday, she touted the mission, military action within the borders of a sovereign nation. She didn't call for Obama's impeachment because he gave the kill order to get bin Laden in Pakistan.

Moore's statement:

"I applaud our military, our President, and his national security team for ridding the world of the dark presence of Osama bin Laden. He has held the world captive, and his death ends a tragic chapter in a horror story where extremists target innocent civilians with murder, mayhem and fear.

"Bin Laden’s death brings a sense of relief to the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 and indeed every American. Our global partners and allies and peoples all over the world – regardless of race, creed, color, country, or religion – stand vigilant and unified with us today to rebuke this extremism and break free from the bondage of fear."

Personally, I don't feel a sense of relief. I'm glad bin Laden has been brought to justice, but I don't feel safer at all. This war, and it is a war, is not over.

In sum, Obama and the Democrats are shameless in their hypocrisy.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney have been vindicated.

Without their efforts and their tireless battle against Obama and the Democrats, bin Laden would be alive today; and Obama wouldn't be planning a 2012 election photo-op at Ground Zero on Thursday.
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UPDATE: During the afternoon White House press briefing, Jay Carney insists that Obama hasn't changed his mind about the Bush policy interrogation methods.

Of course, Obama kept the vast majority of those policies in place, reneging on his promises.

Paul Ryan: Family Received Benefits After Father's Death

The Leftists have no shame.

Paul Ryan's father died young, and the family received survivor benefits for a while.

Liberals are using that to attack Ryan.

From Hans Bader, the Washington Examiner:

At the age of 16, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., suffered the death of his 55-year-old father. Because of his father’s early death, the government made survivor payments for a few years to Paul Ryan’s family – including for Paul Ryan himself. Ryan collected benefits for two years, until he turned 18.

The net effect of the death of Paul Ryan’s father was likely to reduce taxpayer expenditures on Ryan’s family, since retirees typically collect at least a decade’s worth of benefits. (My own father died five years short of retirement. The result was that my mother, who could otherwise have collected spousal benefits when he retired, instead had to wait well over a decade for benefits, reducing her lifetime social security benefits. She was effectively punished for his death.)

But the Daily Kos blog is now using his father's early death against Ryan. A Daily Kos diary attacks Ryan in a post entitled, “Entitlement-hating Paul Ryan collected Social Security benefits until he was 18.” Never mind that Ryan’s recent budget proposal doesn’t in fact seek to abolish entitlements, much less get rid of Social Security. It merely seeks to cut the rate of growth of exploding Medicare costs by eventually giving its recipients vouchers they can use to shop around for medical care.

Not all Daily Kos diaries reflect the views of Daily Kos as a whole, but this one does, since it was briefly featured on the top of the front page of Daily Kos, and is still listed as a “recommended” blog post in the sidebar on the right side of Daily Kos's main page. More than 183 Daily Kos readers have commented in response to it – virtually all in agreement with its hateful sentiments.

Here's the post from the slimy Daily Kos: "Entitlement-hating Paul Ryan collected Social Security benefits until he was 18."

The post attacking Ryan ends with this:

What an evil hypocrite.

No, Paul Ryan is not evil, though Obama tried to paint him as evil.

No, Paul Ryan is not a hypocrite, as Bader explains.

It's sick that the Leftists would cite the death of Ryan's dad to attack him so unfairly.

The fact is the Daily Kos liberals are fringe nuts.

They are filled with hate. It blinds them from the truth, which is convenient. The truth is their enemy. Their extreme agenda doesn't fit with reality.

Paul Ryan is not evil and he's not a hypocrite.

When it comes to the Daily Kos minions, however, I think a case could be made that many of them are not good people.

Feingold Bashes Walker and Obama

Russ Feingold, former U.S. senator, booted from office by the people of Wisconsin on November 2, 2010, received a Leftist award in Washington on Wednesday.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Making his first speech in Washington, D.C., since he left the Senate, Russ Feingold on Wednesday chastised Democrats for failing to protect civil liberties and Republicans for going after workers' bargaining rights.

Feingold was in Washington to receive the Ridenhour Courage Prize, an award honoring progressive figures and causes that has gone in the past to Daniel Ellsberg, Seymour Hersh, former President Jimmy Carter and Gloria Steinem.

He said at the awards ceremony that the White House was "flat-out wrong" in its recent decision to try suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks before a military commission instead of a civilian court.

"The administration's flip-flop on this issue is a mistake," said Feingold.

He also invoked the budget and labor debate in Wisconsin, saying a "cherished right for generations in my home state was stripped way from thousands of people who work for public agencies."

...Talking to small group of reporters before the awards ceremony, Feingold was unsparing in his criticism of Gov. Scott Walker over the collective bargaining issue.

"All of us in Wisconsin are shocked that somebody decided that, for the purposes of one policy issue, they were going to tear the state apart. And we are suffering from divisions that we've never had before and it's going to take a very long time to repair it," said Feingold. "I can't imagine anything worse than the way (the governor) has conducted himself."

On the recall drives now under way, Feingold stopped short of explicitly advocating the recall of GOP lawmakers or of Walker, saying, "I've never been a fan of recall elections." But he called recalls an appropriate remedy in unusual circumstances, and "this could be such an occasion."

Feingold said as a political matter that timing was a key tactical question for the opposition to Walker, who won't be able to undo his policies without taking control of both legislative chambers and replacing the governor.

"I hope that people who are thinking about recalls are thinking strategically, about when is the best time is to achieve those goals. Because the biggest mistake you could have is to just rush in, and put all your chips out on one recall election and if it doesn't go well, then things sort of go in reverse," said Feingold.

Asked about speculation he might be a candidate for governor in the future, the former senator said, "My plate is very full . . . I have no plans to run for public office."

Feingold says he has no plans to run for public office. His plate is full.

He sounds like Bill Clinton:

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

Of course, Feingold's future may hold a run for public office.

We know he wants to be president, but I think he'd be willing to settle for a run for governor or trying to get back in the U.S. Senate.

Feingold didn't establish his Progressives United (P.U.) political action committee to fill spare time. I don't think it's a hobby.

Russ has plans, though his chances for success are poor.

We aren't going to get fooled again.

Ron Johnson, Maiden Speech (Video, Transcript)

On Tuesday, Senator Ron Johnson delivered his Maiden Speech on the U.S. Senate floor.

Video



Here is the transcript, as prepared for delivery:

“Thank you Mr. President. It is my honor to represent the good people of Wisconsin in the United States Senate. It is an awesome responsibility - a responsibility I take very seriously.

“Today, it is my distinct privilege to address this historic body for the first time. It is a moment in time when our nation is in peril. Not only do we continue to face the very real threat of international terrorism, but we also face a threat of our own making - one that challenges the very foundation of this republic.

“Our nation was founded on the basis of God-given rights and individual liberty. The genius of our Founding Fathers’ vision was rooted in their recognition that more often than not, government was something to fear. Government necessarily limited individual freedom, and therefore, government itself must be limited; its potential for growth, highly constrained.

“During America’s first century, this vision was largely upheld. The last century, however, has been an entirely different story.

“In 1902, the federal government spent 2% of the nation’s gross domestic product. State and local governments spent 5%. Government was close to the governed. The size, scope, and cost of the federal government was constrained by the Constitution’s enumerated powers. The individual was preeminent, and government’s role was modest and pedestrian.

“This body played a key role in limiting federal government expansion. Debate in the Senate was unlimited. The cloture vote did not exist. As George Washington had said, the Senate really was the saucer that cooled the tea.

“All that changed in the 20th century’s second decade. The Senate adopted the cloture vote, and America adopted the 16th Amendment. The federal government now had the power to tax income, and the Senate had made it easier for government to grow. And guess what, government grew.

“It grew in reaction to real problems. Trusts had been formed that concentrated power and created monopolies that threatened free-markets. Capital did exert too much power over labor. Balance was needed.

“And as our nation’s prosperity grew, the elimination of poverty and retirement insecurity became a public responsibility. Private charity was simply deemed not up to the task.

“So government acted and government grew. From 2% in 1902 to today, where the federal government spends 25% of our nation’s economy, and combined, all levels of government in the U.S. now consume 39%. By comparison, the size of government in Norway is 40%; in Greece, 47%; and in France, 53%. In the end, I don’t believe Americans want to be like France or Greece. We haven’t reached that tipping point yet, but we are extremely close.

“There is a reason America holds 5% of the world’s population, and yet accounts for 24% of the world’s GDP. It is because of freedom, the free market system, and the American people.

“America became a land of unlimited opportunity because we were a nation of self-reliant people. Hard work was valued, personal responsibility expected, and success was celebrated, not demonized. I grew up in that America.

“I am sad to say, what I have witnessed during my lifetime, is a slow but steady drift, and I would argue over the last two years, a lurch, toward a culture of entitlement and dependency. This is not an America I recognize. It is not an America that will work.

“Even worse, we have granted entitlements and encouraged dependency with little thought as to how we would pay for it. We have racked up enormous debt, and now the bill is coming due.

“Time is running out. Last week, the government almost shut down because we were arguing over a few billion dollars. But our debt and deficits are measured in the trillions. Our problem is a thousand times larger than the current debate.

“Most of us recognize this is simply unsustainable. Most of us know what programs need to be reformed. And most of us want to fix the problem. So let’s start addressing these issues now, before it is too late.

“These are enormous problems, and it is easy to be pessimistic. But there is reason to be hopeful.

“I’ve done a fair amount of traveling throughout Wisconsin over the last year, speaking to all kinds of people: Republicans, Democrats, union members and Tea Party folks. I talked about America. About how incredibly precious and exceptional it is, and how I fear we may be losing it.

“What I will never forget is how many people came up to me after my speeches with tears in their eyes, or tears rolling down their cheeks. Not because I’m a great public speaker, but because people love this country. Their political affiliation makes absolutely no difference. Americans want this nation preserved, and they are counting on us to do just that. The good news is that they will support us, if we make the hard choices together.

“So together, let’s roll up our sleeves, and do what needs to be done.

“Mr. President, I yield the floor.”

I am so thankful that I have Ron Johnson representing me in the U.S. Senate.

Finally, FINALLY, the long Wisconsin nightmare of Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold is over.

Russ Feingold and JoAnne Kloppenburg

Radical Leftist Russ Feingold, former U.S. senator fired on November 2, 2010, by the people of Wisconsin, supports (SURPRISE!) JoAnne Kloppenburg for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

He posted his endorsement on the website of his political action committee - P.U. or Progressives United.

Feingold writes:

Why I Am Supporting JoAnne

March 29, 2011
By Russ Feingold

In the last two months, we watched as Governor Walker and the Republican-led state legislature ignored Wisconsin’s traditions of compromise, common-sense, and comity.

Just as disturbing is the path our Supreme Court races have taken over the last few years - as outside interest groups and corporate donations brought these campaigns into the mud.

Our state deserves better, and our elected officials, especially Supreme Court justices, should be held to a higher standard.

It's time we stand together to support candidates who will respect Wisconsin's traditions and impartially follow the law. JoAnne Kloppenburg is that candidate. On April 5, Wisconsinites can go to the polls and bring some much-needed change to the court.

JoAnne has a long record of working with progressives and conservatives in the interest of justice, and she'll make an excellent justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Together, we can support a candidate who impartially applies the law and upholds the individual rights and democratic principles that this state holds dear. Please vote for JoAnne Kloppenburg in next week’s election.

The fact that Feingold is supporting Kloppenburg should serve as an alert to Wisconsin voters.

Vote for Justice David Prosser.