Source: United States Senator for Wisconsin Ron Johnson
WASHINGTON — On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) appeared on Fox Business’ “Mornings with Maria” to discuss the Democrats’ reckless spending proposals, out-of-control deficit spending and plans to increase taxes on Americans, and Dr. Anthony Fauci’s dishonesty with Americans about COVID.
The full interview can be found here, and excerpts are below.
On “infrastructure” bill:
“There was a way to do infrastructure without further mortgaging our kids’ future, and that would have been to take the more than $700 billion of the $1.9 trillion partisan Covid relief package that isn’t even spent until 2022 through 2028, and repurpose that for infrastructure. That should have been the Republican position. We shouldn’t be signing up to the Green New Deal, Part I. We shouldn’t be supporting things like breathalyzers in new cars, which will drive up cost of cars. Again, to me, this is a disastrous bill. When we actually do need to spend money on infrastructure, I have no idea why Republicans would want to have any of their fingerprints on this bill. Plus, it facilitates Bernie’s budget, the — probably five, five and a half trillion dollars would be the real score, as you pointed out from Maya MacGuineas’ group — his blowout budget package.”
On continuation of massive deficit spending:
“We were also told this is going to be completely paid for. Now we’re finding out, no, the CBO says it’s going to cost about $256 billion in additional deficit spending. Again, I can’t explain what my colleagues are — why they are supporting this thing. I wish they weren’t. I wish we were standing pat. Like I said, what’s going to happen is the amount of money that’s being pulled out of this, for real infrastructure — and there is some real infrastructure spending going on in this bill — but that money is being pulled out of Bernie’s budget, which is leaving a hole for them to fill with new entitlement spending. Again, that’s what is going to happen in this $3.5 trillion budget package, is it’s going to be new entitlements. For example, a half trillion dollars on energy, that is more of the Green New Deal. Education, social services, income security — that’s not Social Security, that’s not Medicare — income security, those are new entitlements. And as Ronald Reagan said, the closest thing to eternal life on this Earth is a government program.”
On increasing taxes:
“They’re talking about a pretty significant increase in the corporate tax, which is going to drive more corporations probably overseas. It won’t work — the more you tax success, the less you’re going to get of it. In the end, Maria, it’s going to be the middle class that’s going to pay for this either through inflation, so all their wage increases will be wiped out by inflation. So, it might feel good to get a raise but not when you have to pay more for gas, for milk, for housing and for everything else. In the end it’s the American public that is going to pay, or our kids and grandkids in terms of reduced future opportunities, less prosperity in the future. This is really sad what’s happening.”
On Dr. Fauci:
“The American people have a right to know what is happening inside the administration, what is happening inside their government. Administrations, Republican and Democrat, just blow off congressional oversight requests. They just ignore it because we really don’t have many enforcement mechanisms, so over the decades Congress’ oversight capabilities have been incredibly weakened. These emails that we know about were through a FOIA request using the courts, and all we asked for was send us the exact same documents, but we’re not subject to those FOIA redactions. We got the same emails, there was one paragraph that was unredacted. It’s pretty revealing, it was redacted because it was supposedly related to an ongoing law enforcement investigation, but you read what it is, and it has nothing to do with a law enforcement investigation, it’s just embarrassing to Anthony Fauci. So, the administration’s got to come clean, and Congress has to reclaim its oversight ability on behalf of the American public. They deserve the right to see this information.”
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