Frederica Freyberg:
Even as the shutdown started, Wisconsin Republican U.S. Senator Ron Johnson proposed a bill called Eliminate Shutdowns Act. He’s here to explain. Senator, thanks for being here.

Ron Johnson:
Hello Frederica, how are you doing?

Frederica Freyberg:
Good.

Frederica Freyberg:
So you’ve had it with shutdowns. What does your bill do?

Ron Johnson:
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 tired of this for a long time. And all it does is if you don’t appropriate money for government prior to the beginning of the fiscal year or any department, doesn’t shut down government. Doesn’t shut down those departments, just establishes a rolling, 14 day continuing appropriation. So then the appropriators have time to pass an appropriation bill. Again, it’s just — it’s modeled, 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 it at 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 appropriators, Republican appropriators vote against it because they said it would undercut the appropriation process but let me just describe that process that’s being 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 passed? Six. But that’s a 96.7% failure rate. That, that’s apparently what the Alleviate Shutdown Act would undermine or undercut. Again, it’s absurd. I’m not — 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.

Frederica Freyberg:
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?

Ron Johnson:
Well, that’s what I try to do. Just — let’s prevent this. Just pass the Eliminate Shutdowns Act and then we can negotiate whatever wants — whatever needs to be negotiated: individual appropriation bills. You know, there is agreement on many things. For example, the Senate did pass what we call a minibus. 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 into 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-honed 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 2000 page plus omnibus spending bill. They’ll drop it on our desk and say, vote for it or 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.

Frederica Freyberg:
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.

Ron Johnson:
Well, remember, these were temporary enhanced credits for the pandemic. There’s all kinds of pandemic relief funding that has expired that we’re not continuing. Why do we continue these?

Frederica Freyberg:
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?

Ron Johnson:
Well, first of all, what we did was actually minimal. We’re not cutting Medicaid funding. We’re trying to do is eliminate the fraud. We’re trying to eliminate Medicaid being used by people in this country illegally. Quite honestly, we didn’t go far enough.

Frederica Freyberg:
What is your response to President Trump seeming to use the shutdown as a predicate to put — to cut agency budgets and personnel?

Ron Johnson:
Well, first of all, in the private sector, when your company goes bankrupt, you know, unfortunately people lose their jobs and they have to go find employment elsewhere. You know, 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 private 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 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’re spending 4.4. We’re $37 trillion in debt. You got to start trimming this sometime.

Frederica Freyberg:
We leave it there. Senator Ron Johnson, thanks very much.

Ron Johnson:
Good day.