So we'll let his record of small thinking on big issues do the talking:
About the needs of Wisconsin farmers and rural communities in the omnibus farm bill he voted against:
Why did he vote against programs helping beginning farmers, supporting rural development, export marketing, and the Conservation Stewardship Program, which rewards farmers for conservation?And Johnson - - eligible, along with the staff he has chosen, and their dependents, for federally-supplied Cadillac health care coverage - - goes into robotic stump speech mode instead of showing concern for constituents with cancer:
If funding is his concern, why did he vote against the Republican-sponsored amendment to cap payments that farmers receive when market prices for crops go south? Why did he vote to prohibit USDA from making loan guarantees — a budget-neutral policy instituted in the Reagan years to provide a bigger role in agriculture for private lenders?
Why did he vote against another no-cost amendment requiring crop insurance to be available for organic crops under terms similar to other crops — in this state, with the second-largest organic farming sector in the nation?
The farm bill covers forestry also, which matters to a state where 46 percent of the land is in forests. Why did Johnson vote against reauthorizing the Forest Legacy Program, which provides 75 percent of the funding to purchase voluntary conservation easements from private landowners — a cornerstone of Wisconsin’s forest conservation?
Discussing health care outside the Supreme Court today, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told ThinkProgress that there “shouldn’t” be a law requiring businesses to cover employees who have cancer because that would “create an obligation” for others.
“When you create a right for somebody,” Johnson said, “you create an obligation for somebody else, and then you’re taking away that person’s right.”
KEYES: I know Richard Murdock had said even though businesses should give people, for instance, with cancer, health coverage, they shouldn’t be legally required by the federal government.
Oh, and if mercury-free fish from the Great Lakes is your heart's desire, don't expect help from Johnson.JOHNSON: They shouldn’t. Listen, our rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And when we start expanding beyond that realm, when you create a right for somebody, you create an obligation for somebody else, and then you’re taking away that person’s right. And that maybe doesn’t seem all that great, but it’s just true. Our nation was based on the foundation of freedom and limited government.
His comments are absolutely sick. I thought he was a pro-life Catholic. Shame on him!
ReplyDeleteHe is a Lutheran. He opposed the Child Victims Act but rather to protect any business that supported Catholic Charities - including himself. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_09/025909.php
ReplyDeleteRoJo: "Our nation was based on the foundation of freedom and limited government."
ReplyDeleteYes, on freedom and back in the days when replacement teeth were made of wood, and so were severed limbs. Slop buckets were dumped in the streets. No one, not even our forward-most thinkers, had conceived of plastics or flush toilets.
RoJo, you are standing on the shoulders of giants and acting with the intelligence of a flea.
If government healthcare is so bad and such anathema to your finely tuned sensibilities, give yours back. Also that of your family and your staff.
I see that Paul Ryan has joined Ron Johnson aboard the "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" choo-choo train. It must be a new Republican talking point: Act as though the Constitution and the Bill of Rights don't exist.
ReplyDeleteLife, Liberty, and the pursuit for happiness. With that I can do a lot with. I am fortunate to have been provided with the life I live. Many in America cannot say the same, but we all have been given the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
ReplyDeleteLet's walk that statement backward. Happiness, What is happiness to you? To me, happiness is seeing my children smile. Big smiles are the best. If you are a parent, you "try" to remember all of them. You know it is impossible, but always relish the next. For some those smiles never come. Or, the smiles come less often because of new obligations. New regulation that must learned. New bills to be paid.
Liberty. My family visited the Statue of Liberty. Beautiful, and walked through Ellis Island. Pretty cool, and my hair was on end. See my Lutheran grandfather and grandmother had immigrated from Norway. 1897 and 1907 respectively. Every night my grandfather and his oldest son would walk their community in North Dakota telling them to turnoff all lights inside and close all window shades. Blackouts so the enemy could not bomb the community because the couldn't see it. I'd say that was a social contract.
Life. What part of getting an illness that may cause you and your extended family severe financial hardships, and possibly getting fired because your employer just decided to cut your health insurance because you are sick, ensures that you are provided with life?