Thank you very much.
We have come to the rule.
Okay, we're standing by now.
And we are rolling.
Stand by.
Even as the shutdown started,
Wisconsin Republican U.S.
Senator Ron Johnson proposed a bill
called Eliminate Shutdowns
Act. He's here to explain it.
Senator, thanks for being here.
How are you doing?
Good. So you've had it with
shutdowns.
What does your bill do?
Well, first of all, I will ask you,
I think it's pretty obvious, you and
your listeners, I mean, aren't you
getting sick and tired of this?
I've been sick and tire of this for
a long time.
When I was chairman of Homeland
Security, I told my committee,
let's pass something to eliminate
all shutdowns.
And back then, I had
a number of different bills to
choose from. I chose Maggie Hassan
and James Langford's bill, the
Preventing Shutdown Act.
And we tried to get that passed.
We haven't been able to.
So this is a slimmed down version
that's actually simpler than that.
It's just called Eliminate Shutdowns
Act. And all it does is if you don't
appropriate money for government
prior to the beginning of the fiscal
year or any department,
it doesn't shut down government,
doesn't shutdown those departments,
it just establishes a rolling 14-day
continuing appropriation.
So then the appropriators have time
to pass an appropriation bill.
Again, it really
is modeled after what Wisconsin did
in the 50s.
They're the same thing.
It doesn't decrease, it doesn't
increase spending. It just keeps the
last year's levels until you
pass an appropriation.
I was disappointed that
every Democrat voted against that
when we voted on it Monday.
But we also had 12 Republican
appropriators vote against it
because they said it would undercut
the appropriation process.
But let me just describe that
process that would be undercut.
I've been here 15 years.
15 appropriation cycles.
That means 180 appropriation
bills should have been passed before
the end of the fiscal year on time.
You know how many have been past?
Six.
But that's a 96.7%
failure rate.
That's apparently what the
Eliminate Shutdown Act would
undermine or undercut.
Again, it's absurd.
Listen, I would love to see an
appropriation process work.
It doesn't.
It's obvious it doesn't, so let's
at a minimum stop playing
partisan politics with
people's lives. I mean, this is
highly disruptive to people,
and there's no reason for it
whatsoever. The House has passed a
continuing resolution.
All Democrats have to do is do the
same thing to end the Schumer
shutdown.
So in this shutdown, again,
as you've just expressed, you blame
Democrats, but why not negotiate
it out before it gets to this
point?
Well, that's what I try to do.
Just let's prevent this.
Just pass the Eliminate Shutdown
Act, and then we can negotiate
whatever needs to be negotiated.
You know, individual appropriation
bills.
There is agreement on many
things. For example, the Senate did
pass what we call a mini bus.
The main part of that was Veterans
Affairs and Military Construction.
That passed the Senate.
I'm not sure what happened in the
House. We didn't conference those.
It hasn't been signed to law.
But there should be plenty of areas
of agreement. The problem is,
as dysfunctional as this seems,
Frederica, this actually is a very
well-homed process on
the part of the Uniparty,
where you don't pass appropriation
bills. You put yourself into
the shutdown mode.
You create deadlines,
like right before Thanksgiving or
right before Christmas.
You know, members want to go home.
The appropriators or leadership
basically writes a 2,000-
page-plus onto the spending mill,
drops it on their desks and say,
vote for it, you can't go home.
That's one of the reasons we've gone
from $14 trillion to over $37
trillion in debt since I arrived
here in 2011.
Now, you're joining us just
before the latest vote on the
continuing resolution to fund
government.
Is there any movement on either
side?
It doesn't sound like it.
As a matter of fact, it sounds like
Democrats are going to make us go
through more federal votes just to
kind of keep people here for
no reason.
But no, this would be the third time
we're going to be voting on the
House Clean Sea hour.
And the House passed this over a
week ago, which by the way was not
an easy lift for Speaker Johnson.
I don't like continuing resolutions.
A lot of House conservatives don't'
like them.
But we also don't let government
shut down, so we kind of suck it up
and we vote for this continuing
resolution to get things resolved.
So the House pass the continuing
resolution.
They're on break.
You know, we had Jewish holidays and
those types of things. So they're on
recess. So the only way to
open government at this point in
time is to pass their relatively
clean sea hour, which by the way,
this is based on Biden's
budget. These are spending levels
that Democrats and President Biden
agreed to. They voted for them
earlier in the year.
But we know. Now it's not
acceptable.
We know what the Democrats are
seeking, and that is an extension of
the enhanced tax credits in the
Affordable Care Act.
You've long opposed the Affordable
care Act. I trust you would never
vote in favor of extending those
enhanced credits.
Well, remember, these were temporary
enhanced credits for the pandemic.
But there's all kinds of pandemic
relief funding that has expired
that we're not continuing.
Why do we continue these?
Plus, this particular
enhanced subsidy has
provided millions of Americans with
zero premium policies.
What that has done is created
all kinds of fraud, and this is
being prosecuted.
There's local news reports on this.
Individuals without their knowledge
are being signed up for insurance
policies.
The unscrupulous brokers and agents
are collecting a commission.
The billions of dollars are being
sent to insurance carriers who
never have to pay a claim on these
because people don't even know it.
So if you vote to extend these
enhancements and continue these zero
premium policies,
you are voting to
continue this.
Fraud, this massive fraud.
Tens of billions of dollars being
paid to insurance companies for
policies they pay no claims on.
I don't see how anybody could vote
for that. Not winning $37 trillion
in debt.
As to Medicaid,
could you see Republicans backing
down on any of the provisions in
the big, beautiful bill, including
additional requirements around
eligibility that critics
argue would result in people losing
coverage?
Well, first of all,
what we did was actually minimal.
We're not cutting Medicaid funding.
What we're trying to do is eliminate
the fraud. We're trying eliminate
Medicaid being used by
people in this country illegally.
Quite honestly, we didn't go far
enough. We didn't really address the
primary problem with Obamacare,
which was the Obamcare expansion on
Medicaid, which really incentivizes
providers to focus more on
single, able-bodied,
childless adults over...
Disabled children.
For every dollar a state puts in for
a disabled child, the federal
government kicks in $1.33.
For every $1 they kick in for an
able-bodied, childless adult,
we kick in $9, which
is allowed...
That's resulted in provider fees,
provider taxes, which is just
basically a scam.
It's legalized fraud that now states
are basing their budgets off and so
are hospitals, but that's not health
care.
It's further bankrupting America.
What is your response to President
Trump seeming to use
the shutdown as predicate
to cut agency
budgets and personnel?
Well, first of all, in the private
sector, when your company goes
bankrupt, unfortunately people
lose their jobs and they have to go
find employment elsewhere.
Except for the fact that the federal
government can extract the
fruits of our labors and taxation,
this is a bankrupt entity.
And so I don't see why public
service, public sector employees
should be immune to what we all
have to experience in the privacy
sector. It's unfortunate.
It doesn't have to be.
Again, Democrats could end this
today.
In about an hour when we vote
on the House continuing resolution,
we could reopen government.
So there's no sense in them
wailing about the fact that maybe
President Trump will utilize this
opportunity to shrink down the
size of government, which by and
large I'd be all for.
I mean, the federal government is
massive, spent $7 trillion
this year, 2019,
before the pandemic we were spending
$4.4, worth $37 trillion in
debt.
You've got to start trimming this
sometime.
We leave it there, Senator Ron
Johnson.
Thanks very much.
Okay, take care.
Bye, thank you.
Have a good vote.