Ron Johnson

Can you describe what happens, why it is such a big deal?

A deficit projected over about $103 trillion. Talk about unsustainable.

Let us keep the energy prices low.

I just want to understand, why did Europe do it? What would have been so terrible about letting Greece exit?

We need to be concerned about the events in Greece.

I was rather shocked at the result.

Spending money on a facility that will not meet our needs, that does not allow us to train with the military on a military-type training base, is not what we need for the future.

I want to make sure we are doing the right thing by our taxpayers and providing high-quality training for our men and women.

Thank you, Senator Carper.

But let us at least protect ourselves from GMD in a more robust fashion where it does not cost very much.

It is 100 percent certainty that this will occur. Maybe not tomorrow, 10 percent every decade, but it will occur.

And we have known absolutely this for decades, publicly since at least 2004 with these EMP Commissions, and we have done virtually nothing.

The dangers posed by EMP and GMD have been well known really for decades but made public now for over 10 years, and we literally have not done anything.

It is just a shame, it is just unconscionable we did not.

We have let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and we have allowed governmental dysfunction to prevent us from even doing the basic first little quick fixes to begin protecting our critical infrastructure.

Just government does not work, and I think this is pretty obvious.

Trust me, now I am all about let us not grow the Federal Government, let us not overregulate.

The purpose of this hearing is to basically stop and pull our head out of the sand, and start paying attention to this very real threat.

The government has not done anything.

So 7 years later, we have not developed national and regional restoration plans.

Seven years later, we have virtually done nothing in terms of some quick fixes that would cost $100,000 per transformer.

Let us not sit back and go, 'Well, if you cannot protect everything, protect nothing.' Let us start protecting things.

So it was just ignored. It was something pretty scary, and we did not want to acknowledge it, so we put our head in the sand, and our head is still in the sand, by and large.

Voluntary is not working so good. From my standpoint, this is something that needs to be addressed.

But we can protect ourselves against something like the Carrington Effect, the 1921 effect, and we can do that for a relatively low cost.