Ron Johnson

Thank you, Senator Daines.

I can assure you the Russians were probing our systems in 2016.

I am happy to work with you. In fact, we have three Executive Orders on this.

We should not be penny wise and pound foolish.

We do ban things like child pornography. It is illegal to incite violence.

We are a Nation of immigrants. We have welcomed them. They have made this Nation great.

I think they have been very careful in their verbal testimony to distinguish between Muslims who are practicing their faith peacefully and spiritually as opposed to political Islam.

The U.S. Constitution does not have to be a suicide pact. We have to recognize that.

I appreciate you being so supportive of us holding this hearing

I completely agree with you. The first step is you have to make a country an attractive place for investing their risk capital.

It is actually kind of depressing, and it does, to a certain extent, point to the lure of what Russia's propaganda is all about.

I think probably the best way to counter violent extremism in any of its forms is through economic opportunity.

We cannot allow Southeast Europe, the Balkans to slip into the wrong category.

I certainly want to assure the region that they do have a great deal of support in Congress.

We do understand in Congress here how important our relationship with Europe is.

This is no time to abandon Southeastern Europe. Let us not be pennywise and pound foolish.

Just to underscore that point, I was in Montenegro. I guess a survey provided by one of the private sector guys I was talking to said that 50 percent of Montenegrin youth wanted to be employed by the government, which is not exactly a real…

So really targeting the leaders, not the population.

Good afternoon. This hearing titled Southeast Europe: Promoting Democracy and Countering Malign Foreign Influence of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation is called to order.

I want to thank Senator Cardin and his staff, along with my staff, for what I think was an incredible effort to bring balance to a bill but to send a very strong, strong message to Russia.

We have done about 80 percent of it. Now we do need to do entitlement reform, but Simpson-Bowles barely did anything.

We have done about 81 percent of Simpson-Bowles and we still have a massive debt problem and a massive projected deficit.

I think our solution forward is going to be to get our Democratic and Republican former Governors in the Senate to work on some of these budget reforms.

This would actually be a subtractive process.

Let us provide that civil liability protection against those civil suits so local law enforcement are not caught between a rock and a hard place in a very difficult situation.