Ron Johnson
The Public Record
Ron Harold Johnson is an American businessman and politician currently serving as the junior United States senator from Wisconsin, a position he has held since January 3, 2011. A member of the Republican Party, Johnson has focused on issues such as fiscal responsibility, healthcare reform, and government accountability during his tenure in the Senate. He has been an outspoken advocate for reducing the federal deficit and has often emphasized the need for economic growth through private sector initiatives.
I do believe that deficit reduction is a children's issue and something that is very important.
And we all want a strong social safety net. We are a very compassionate society.
We are a compassionate society. I think all Americans want a strong social safety net.
The Affordable Care Act is going to have a total government takeover of the health care system to disastrous results, is that not true?
I would like to scrap the entire thing, rebuild the tax system on pretty basic principles: raise the revenue you need, do no economic harm.
I would suggest--I am glad that Senator Wyden is here--the way to do that is treat all corporate income as pass-through income.
Do any of you know of a tax increase that is going to promote economic growth or that will make us more competitive globally? Does it one exist?
The way we start controlling health care costs is we reconnect the consumer of the product with the payment of the product.
I just want to ask any member of the panel, is there any tax increase that you know of that helps our economy grow or keeps us competitively globally?
But the balanced approach, if you increase taxes, it is going to harm economic growth.
I just kind of have a common-sense notion that the way you really strengthen the middle class is have a strong economy, and you have businesses that have the incentive to risk their capital.
We have enticed our children to incur collectively $1 trillion of debt in higher education.
I do not think the Federal Government is particularly good at predicting what this is going to be.
I have a great deal of faith in individuals, in local governments, State governments, local teachers, school administrators.
So increasing taxes on the rich is a tenth as effective if we would actually just return our economy to a normal economy.
If we would just return to a normal economy, which we had in 2007, when revenue generation was 18.5 percent of our economy, that would add an additional $435 billion per year.
I do not see any way we start solving these problems until we are honest with the American people in terms of the depth of the problem.
For anybody to say that Social Security is solvent to the year 2035 is just--I just think that is a false statement.
The Social Security Trust Fund in total, on a consolidated basis, has no value to the Federal Government.





