Ron Johnson

I mean, is the media value what you spend on it?

That is marketing. What do you spend on recruitment?

To me, this is gobbledygook and what you need to be looking at is pretty basic in terms of measurement of effectiveness.

I do not think I can add a whole lot to that.

It says that not a single person has joined the Army National Guard as a result of the $136 million spent sponsoring race legend, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. over the last 5 years of recruiting new members.

Is the Administration at all, considering--I realize Keystone XL Pipeline is a different issue--but are we considering other pipelines to take some of the burden off the rail system?

We are not making it clear, though. We are not making it clear at all.

I am not in any way, shape, or form convinced that the Europeans will ever agree to sanctions that would have any possibility of changing Vladimir Putin's calculus.

What does that tell you? He seems to be impervious to the economic harm.

The economic approach is going to fail. So that is what I am saying. When the economic approach fails, then what do we do?

Vladimir Putin will not respond to words. He will only respond to action.

I have heard the President repeat words that I know a lot of us have also repeated as well. We need to change Putin's calculus.

The currency had already devalued before we ever instituted sanctions.

We threatened serious consequences with Crimea. They have done it.

It will be too little too late because this has spun out of control and Vladimir Putin will have accomplished what he wanted in eastern Ukraine.

Are we recognizing that reality as we are seeing this thing spin out of control?

I appreciate your holding this hearing.

I think you are exactly the kind of folks we ought to be talking to in depth, in detail.

You, to me, spoke the magic words here--prevention and deterrence.

I am just looking forward to the testimony from the witnesses.

This is just a good government piece of legislation.

I think we need full authorities in the IG Act because many times--and it happens to us at Ex-Im Bank--you are looking at a transaction in an audit and you find fraud.

I think from my standpoint it almost seems better to have completely independent OIGs for five different agencies rather than have one associated with one agency and then offload four additional agencies to that one because, again, I just…

I am coming at this from the perspective of a private sector guy who has gone through a lot of financial statement audits.

In the private sector, we have something called the Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) principle.