 county chamber members so glad to have this kind of turnout for this important event. I'm Betsy Alice, I'm the executive director of the Sheboyg County Chamber. I'd also like to thank Prevea. Prevea has now for probably four years sponsored our first Friday forums and this even though it's on a Monday is also a first Friday forum so we really appreciate their support and I'd like to give them a round of applause. A privilege of introducing our guest speaker Senator Brown Johnson and I'm going to just do an introduction unlike my usual character I'm going to read some of this because I think it's kind of fun. Kind of fun to reacquaint ourselves with this man and kind of where he came from and what his life's been like and all those secrets that he never opened. Sorry I both of Ron's parents were born and raised on farms. Their work ethic and small-town values were naturally passed along to their children. As a result, Ron has worked hard his whole life and he continues to do that. As a boy he mowed lawn, shoveled snow, delivered papers and caddy for a few extra bucks. At the age of 15, after he was a small child, he obtained his first tax-paying job as a dishwasher at a Walgreens grill. He rose quickly through the ranks to be the soda jerk. The fry cook and finally he was promoted to be the night manager all before he reached the age of 16. That was within a year. He gained early acceptance to University of Minnesota so he skipped his senior year of high school and worked full-time while obtaining his degree in business and accounting. In 1977, after graduating with a BSV accounting degree, he married his wife Jane and started working as an accountant at Jostens. He also continued his education by enrolling in an MBA night program. In July 1979, Ron and Jane moved to Oshkosh to start a business with Jane's brother. The company, Kepur, began producing plastic sheet for packaging and protein applications. From offering the equipment to keeping the company's books and selling its products, Ron has been involved in every function of that business. It is this body of experience and private sector perspective that he now brings to the Senate on behalf of the businesses in our area as well. Ron went to Washington because he believes the federal government is bankrupting America. He thinks it is important for citizen legislators to ally with those who are facing that reality. Ron is a chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and also serves on the budget foreign relations and commerce science and transportation committees. He resides in Oshkosh with his wife Jane. They have three children and two grandchildren. And now I want to welcome Senator Ron Johnson to the stage. Let me just say thank you for being involved in these organizations in Rotary and Chamber. This fellow, Alexis Tocqueville, who was 100 years ago, what he grew about is when he traveled around America and he saw these civic institutions, these community-based institutions, I think accurately made the point, this is what made this country great. Individuals working in the communities, getting involved, being concerned about each other. That was the secret sauce that made America, in my own case, appreciate the nice introduction. I just apparent the fact that I had two parents, loving parents and very deep faith. I don't have to say much more about why I was able to achieve some measure of success within this land of unlimited opportunity. I think every American could point to that fact. In this case, we all know parents, single parents, do a great job raising kids. But if every American can say I had, I was raised by two loving parents, by the way, I did work hard, but not because that was my idea. My mom and dad made me work hard and also instilled in me the basic premise that all work has been out. I remember they tell you, I don't care what somebody did in life, from the lowest-scale level to the highest-scale level, probably the greatest compliment to be on a human being was a person's really hard work. I think it's a value that I think we need to re-embrace in this country. I think we do this very well. I really want to spend most of the time answering questions. I did the chamber in Oscars. I just got there for about a half hour or 45 minutes. Questions went on for about an hour and a half. So I know there's an awful lot of questions. So I'd rather have the hammer on or I'd rather hop to that as soon as possible. But I just have to thank the Sheboygan County, the Economic Development Corporation, the business community here for being so involved. And what I think is just a great example that I'm hoping more people will pick up on and institute something like the Joseph Rodgers in their communities. For those of you who aren't aware of what the Joseph Project is, it's really sprang out the fact that I've traveled around for six years around the city of Wisconsin. Talking to manufacturers, now one of these businesses can hire enough people. You need to have all these high levels of unemployment inside Milwaukee, inside Madison. And now this is a rack of my gravy. What can we do to connect people who want to turn their lives around with all this opportunity? And by the way, good-being manufacturing jobs produce great careers. But what can we do to connect those individuals? And through Serendipity Met, a wonderful man called Pastor Jerome Smith, he's come out here, he's spoken up the Sheboygan area. But he's got a unique build to identify people. In his church, the Greater Praise Church, God and Christ, people that, in all spaces, these are formerly incarcerated, one were alcohol drug abusers, or just people really down on their luck, hard-core unemployed. He's got a unique ability of identifying those individuals and finding out the ones that are willing to commit themselves to succeed. And we're just going for a week. I set the staff working with a bunch of, a lot of other people come in and do some training, three hours a day, four days a week. In the fifth day then, individuals get interviews with great companies here in Sheboygan. This is really where the test site was. I'm not going to name them, because I think you were, and I'll leave when I'll be able to feel bad afterwards. But what's extraordinary about this program is a Pastor Jerome Smith, are the participants. I would say my staff members have really done, just put their heart and soul into this thing. But the employers, the owners, the managers, the superintendents, the people on the shop floor, they not only have the participants dedicated themselves, committed themselves to succeeding, but every one of those people working in those businesses. They're taking a chance. In other words, they're taking a chance on Folsometer City of Milwaukee. Every one of those people in those businesses has been my experience, as I've gone into those businesses, have also committed themselves to helping those individuals succeed. Which gives me back to what made this country great. You do. People in this room, people involved in these civic institutions, they care enough about their communities, care enough about their fellow human beings to get involved. I know this is a by-part of the crowd here. Let me just, when I'm talking about Lincoln Bay Bears, I've been closing it off talking a little bit about my campaign and the kind of commercials we ran to convey to folks in Wisconsin that, you know, we care about you. My final one was in front of my fireplace with the old flag shirt on. I'm just going to paraphrase another quote for you. Because we have serious challenges facing this nation, but you know what gives me hope? You do. Your prayers, your kindness, your hard work and your courage. This is a great nation filled with wonderful people. The good news is, in this demonstration here today, we really do share the same goal. We all want a safe, prosperous, secure Wisconsin America and we are concerned about each other. It's not a bad place to start. So if we concentrate on those areas of agreement, that's Wisconsinites, it's Americans, if we stay involved in our communities and our churches and our civic organizations, things like order, things like change. If we implement our compassion in our own communities, stop relying on a very dysfunctional, ineffective, ineffective broken federal government. We all source our compassion for the federal government. It hasn't worked out too well. It hasn't worked out as well as our children's future. But it hasn't solved it. We don't want more poverty. We don't want more poverty in our communities, working together in these types of organizations. So again, thank you, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, thank you for making Sheboygan County, the city of Sheboygan, the surrounding area, such a welcoming and compassionate county. You are turning lives around. I'll just end on a couple quotes from some of the Joseph Rogers participants. One reason the young man said, you know, my nine-year-old daughter is finally proud of me. The other one said, my parents are finally proud of me. One said, you know, I go to work, it's like heaven. The other one, I go to work, it's like a family. Of course it is. Those of us that have those types of opportunities to work in the great companies realize all the value the work brings to our lives. You know, the mission statement of this country is combined with what I always consider what I always call the letter of intent of our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the contract. But the mission statement is we've all heard it. We hope these truths to be self-evident. I love that. It's so obvious that all of that are Korean Able. That we are endowed by our creator of certain unable rights among those of life, liberty, and pursuit happiness. You do not achieve happiness dependent on anybody. You achieve happiness by earning your own success through the type of work opportunities of this county. It's providing some wonderful people who commit and turn their lives around. There's the example. That's why I'm here. I'm here to thank you as a county, as a people. As a group of folks involved in this kind of organization, thank you for your involvement. I'll start with any questions. Yeah, thanks for your game, sir. Why don't you get the mic in front of somebody for the next one? Okay, so whoever's the next one up, just start talking to Mike. We'll start here. Ready? We've just got a mic, two seconds from you. What do you anticipate? How will we resolve the health care issue that's out there right now? Sure. Well, I won't sure to go with this. It was unfortunate whatever it was. My own ideas, I've been talking about this for a number of years. I actually took a lot of heat from the right flank when I started talking about once the bottom of the care was implemented. You can talk about repeat and replace private implementation, but once implemented, a 308,000 word bill morphed into 20 million words of regulation and rules infiltrating every sector of our health insurance and health provider markets. That's the least anxious stack of fingers. What we shouldn't have been talking about doing, what should have directed our efforts is repairing and eliminating the damage done by a monitor. The harm done to real people. That would be the skyrocketing premiums on the individual insurance markets. It would be talking about reconnecting patients with doctors they knew and trusted. And if we focused on that, I think we would have produced a far better product out of the house and could pass the house and hopefully pass a set on a wide parcel fashion. I would say it's just not smart to start a political discussion saying we're going to do this completely partisan, but we're not going to reach out to the other side. We should have focused on the damage done to real people. In this case, I think Democrats probably don't like the fact that individuals in their state have seen their premiums double and triple. They probably like to fix that as well. So if you start the discussion in more bipartisan fashion, finding those areas of agreement. So I'm hoping as we move forward, we will focus on that. It sounds like the House just uttered an amendment talking about guarantee issue. Now I know how popular it is to cover people with previous conditions. We can do that without collapsing the insurance markets. So guarantee issue, let's apply it to auto insurance. If an auto insurance company had to sell you a policy as soon as you want, any time you want one, who in their right mind would buy auto insurance? They'd go right and say sign me up. Sure, I'll pay you 30% penalty. It collapses insurance markets and we've known that. We knew it when it was passed. So the good news is you can actually cover people with previous conditions. They have to take a little responsibility to remain insured with a subsidized insurance policy if they can't afford it, but using high risk pools. Maine had guaranteed issues collapsing the insurance market. The Institute had built an invisible high risk pool, which is what the House passed. So I'm hoping, you know, we learn something from the attempt in the House, the failed attempt. Start focusing on the damage done. If we do it, then we do it right and we give people real information. If we reach out to the other side, come on. There are people really being harmed and we ask, you know, there are people also benefiting from this. And we've all said we don't want to pull a rug off from under anybody. So let's acknowledge that fact. So let's not pull a rug off from under anybody, focus on the damage, try and fix the harm done. And I think there's probably a path forward, hopefully, out of my bars and fashion. They reform, they replace it with the last and the last. Who's got the mic? I scared everybody off. I mean, we can talk about this. I mean, I can ruin your day. There's so many interesting things to talk about. Currently in the state of Wisconsin, 47% of the people on Medicaid are children. You know, only maybe 9% of the cost. But we have pediatricians in the state are very concerned that if we either block grant or cap Medicaid, shifting costs to the state, the state has no money. And at some point, in the not too distant future, cuts to Medicaid would have to happen. And given that half the kids, half the Medicaid needs are kids, we're concerned that will hurt kids in terms of the coverage they need or the medications they need. How do we protect children as we try to come into grips with the rising costs of Medicaid, which is mostly driven by senior care. Let me start out by asking this group a question. I've asked this literally to 10,000 respondents. Show of hands. How many people here think the federal government is efficient and effective? I see one. So the federal government is efficient and effective. Well, again, I've asked that question to 10,000 people. And I've legally only had a few dozen raise your hand. Most of the time I get primarily what I got here is laughter and giggles and gaffas. The fact of the matter is the federal government is not efficient or effective. It's pretty broken in this function. So I think long term the best solution for the social safety net is to turn it back over to states. Turn it back over to communities. They'll be more efficient, effective at spending. They'll actually design solutions that are tailored to their states or the localities. So we do need to understand when we all sourced our compassion to the federal government, we had a war on poverty. We spent somewhere, you know, depending on how you figured it, $13 to $21 trillion on the war on poverty. Didn't work. Did we leave any poverty? I mean basically once the spending basically started kicking in, poverty rates flatmined. I went on birth rates skyrocketing. Again, going back to what really creates a cohesive society with the foundation building of any society as a family, it's busted apart. You know, I had some public health officials come in. Same thing asking, hey, I understand the reality. I know we've set up the system with federal governments and big tasks collecting and we've got a bid for the money back to the states. Penny's on the out of very sufficient system. We've got to break that dynamic. But I realize it's going to take time. But to me that's the solution. Is start block, block money is kind of the first step. But when you block grant, you also have to start turning back the tax and authority back to states and local governments. Because the one size all, the one size fits all type of solution is not working on the federal government basis at all. And again, I just have a great deal of faith in communities, realizing we're concerned about our kids. But part of the problem with all these federal government run social safety programs is people's charitable now and when you realize well, no federal government's going to take care of that. They're going to take care of those young people. They're going to take care of the impoverished. I don't have to do anything. Because the federal government's going to do it. Well, who's the federal government? us. And I would also point out the fact that it's only $20 trillion in debt. That's about $62,000 for every man, woman, child in America. And it's just begun. Over the next 30 years, CBO projects are going to be $103 trillion of additional debt suspended. About $14 trillion of debt to the Social Security, $34 trillion of Medicare. The rest is more than $50 trillion of interest on the debt. So if you don't want to incur, by the way, I don't think that's possible. We're going to hit a wall and if you think the economic damage of the person in housing bubble is a problem, I'm not going to want to see the damage done by a person in the debt bubble. Which occurs when the U.S. currency is no longer the World Reserve currency. And that's already happening. You're starting to see world trade occur in other denominations. But when we're no longer the World Reserve currency, we become Greece. And a quick little side light, Greece's debt per capita is about half of what ours is. They just have the World Reserve currency. So I know I'm not going to solve your problem here in terms of how do we take care of kids. I'm just suggesting that the federal government is probably the last place in the world we want to turn our healthcare system a really lion to really take care of our kids. We have to do that here in our own communities and our own states. And we've got to set the process of devolving that power together with the tax authority back. Where government is a little, you know, government close to government. Where it is a little more efficient, a little more effective, certainly more powerful. That would be my suggestion. What's your feeling about the possibility of bipartisan support for the recent missile attacks and what's going on in Washington and the world right now? I hope other people share my dismay that it takes something that is clearly prohibited. You know, chemical weapons definitely work right. Before the American before the world kind of opens up its eyes to what has been a genocide over the last five or six years in Syria. Or a picture of a little three year old boy drowned trying to escape. We should have been acting in Syria a long time ago. President Obama should have acted immediately which was by the way my counsel and Samantha Powers called me up to talk about the chemical attack and how we absolutely knew that was coming from Syria. My counsel was, well don't come to Congress. We'll take too long, you did it. We'll move their assets right now. You will have one United States center. I think a bunch of us would support it if we were in action. So I'm definitely supportive of what Trump did. But we need to understand that this slog will continue. And to me, if your mother and your child just died, there's really a whole lot of difference whether it's through sarin gas or a barrel bomb or a precision guided missile directed into a hospital or humanitarian condoes. That's what's been happening. We're going to turn our face away from it. So the solution in Syria is oddly but we first need to defeat ISIS. Every day they've gone, they've continued to exist. They continue to inspire, they continue to train. The problem once we defeat it is going to be bigger in terms of the diaspora of terrorism that's spread outside that system. So defeat ISIS, reclaim that territory. I think it will need a stabilizing force on American boots underground. That's what's going to be required. We should have left them in Iraq. In 2011, I think Syria would have spawned out of control. We couldn't have actually given ourselves the opportunity to show that Syria, Syria would have even occurred, could actually govern with the coal as she governed. The only way that was going to work was with the stabilizing force of American boots underground. So if we do that, we reclaim that territory and defeat ISIS. Now you've changed the conditions on the ground. Maybe there's a negotiated settlement. Maybe we can get Russia's attention. By the way, I think Tillerson has been quite strong. And I think he will be quite strong when he meets with Putin later this week. In saying that, well, Russia, Putin, you are either complicit in the use of chemical weapons by Assad or you are completely incompetent in managing your client state, which is basically what Syria has become of Russia. I think that's exactly the kind of person you need to put on Putin. Putin has no ability to stabilize a situation. All he can really do is provide these stabilizing actions in Ukraine and Georgia and Eastern Europe and Syria around the world. We, America and the West, you take Western Europe and Europe, EU and America, we're about 34 trillion dollars in economic strength. GDP, Russia's less than 2 trillion. Look who's pushing who around. We need to understand really who the big dog is. We need to lead. We need to strengthen our economy. We need to strengthen our military. But we need to lead with our values. That's what we need to do in the world. We've had eight-year hiatus from that trying to achieve peace to withdrawal that's been a miserable failure. And we have to understand the events in Syria are not half the world away. They're laying on our doorstep. Either through migrants coming back in this country through these waiver programs or through our unsecured border. I don't know which way, how we actually feel this, but maybe it's the collapse of nations, the destabilization of nations in Europe is not good for world peace and stability. But again, to me, Syria is in our national interest for a whole host of reasons and we need to stabilize it. I don't think America could be the world's policeman, but when it is in our national interest and we have the ability to stabilize the situation, I think we have to because there's an old world leader. Senator, as you draw up today, you notice that large body of water out there. We are bordering the Great Lakes and we are one of the states and even in one of the countries that makes that body of water the greatest resource in the world of natural fresh water. So, you know, and I know recently Congressman Grossman signed a letter to President Trump and some other, I think our governor also came out and supported the Great Lakes Restoration Funds trying to hold on to that money so that we could turn the corner on some of the issues that we've been facing. Whether it's invasive species or algae blooms, it's a $62 billion asset in terms of tourism to the states surrounding the Great Lakes. So, just wondering where you are on this issue and whether you see some merit in trying to sustain that effort. Okay, yeah. I'm like when I was talking about Medicaid where I really think it should be done locally in the state level. The Great Lakes, first of all, it's interstate. It's also international. So, I definitely see a federal role in achieving a goal we all share, which is a clean environment. So, I have no problems with that standpoint. Again, the House letter was a House letter and what the House handled that. For my standpoint, I do want to at least be sympathetic with what Trump is trying to do on the federal budget. I understand that kinds of work it's a little and so many of these cuts probably won't hurt, but I do want to be supportive of the intent to prioritize and expand it. So, from my standpoint, here's something the Great Lakes initiative is obviously something that is international interstate and there's a real federal role. So, that should be one of those priorities that should get funded. But there are a lot of other priorities that shouldn't. And from my standpoint, coming from the business world, you know, you got a business that has a downturn in sales in order to save itself. Businesses routinely go to their department and say, you got to cut 10-20%. And businesses do it. And somehow they survive. Your government needs to start looking at that kind of process as well. So, I want to be supportive of Trump as he's really tailing these agencies and saying, you know, why don't you focus on your main objective here as opposed to what you're metastasized into? Okay? Sir? The land power came from the old country. It went through outside of it. It went through all the conditions that required them to be here. So, when we use the terminology immigrants is one thing. Illegal immigrants is something else. And I think it just annoys me that the government is playing games with this. And that we need something settled once and for all. And I don't know what your opinion that he, you know, about all that you use. It's just sort of an annoying thing to me. Since, like I say, my parents came through all this island. And they didn't have all these extras that they give to the illegals coming in. So, it really concerns me a lot. So, let's start by announcing the fact that we are a nation of immigrants. It's really made this country unique and strong. Every wave of immigrant coming to this country have come, often times, desktops, but willing to work their you-know-what's-of in this land where we have an opportunity. There's really no difference by and large in terms of the recent waves coming in. So, we need to recognize, in fact, what we also need to recognize needs to be legal and controlled process. You know, one that really does require people to accept the price of this nation, which is the rule of law in the Constitution. Not, I'm sorry, not Sharia law. Not maintain allegiance and loyalty to where they came from. Not, not, not giving up their culture. But certainly ending their allegiance to a different nation. If you're very bent to a nationalization ceremony, it's pretty sober because they are asked to renounce their past loyalty except loyalty here. We ought to do everything we can to set up a legal system here where we have, for Sarah, guess what, in the early 60s, we didn't have a private legal integration. It's circularity. Some here from Mexico could come and work the fields in California for two months, leave with a year's worth of salary and go home. A lot of people would like to go home, but you know, we ended the guesswork program, we started securing the border and now once they get in here, they don't want to take the risk of going back and not being able to get back in as the course of the border is. So from my standpoint, in order to fix this problem, which has been developing over decades, but one of the things I've done in years, we've had 23 hearings on this in my community, I've just laid out all the bills, all the peace legislation is going to fix this problem. Going back to the age and break it when we had, suppose about a million and a half, I think three and a half million people to give answer to the amnesty, passing bill after bill after bill, and I name them off and then I say, well, there's so many people in this country, legally, three and a half, six, nine, 10, 11. We don't fix problems with legislation. The legislation sounds good, it just doesn't fix the problems. It just doesn't fix it. Starting with committing ourselves to secure the border. We have administration willing to do that. We'll do it intelligently. We've got a great deal of faith in Secretary General Kelly. He's got his head screwed on. He just had a hearing on this yesterday. He said, nobody's envisioning a wall from sea to shining sea, not in his department. So we're talking about manpower, we're talking about technology, we're talking about better barriers where we need them. But once we have that commitment to secure our border, then because we're a compassionate society, we'll take care of the individuals here with humanity, the people that are working hard, aren't committing crimes, aren't feeding off our welfare system. Now criminals, the drug owners, the human sex traffickers, you know, the 17, 18-year-old young men who raped repeatedly and brutally a 14-year-old girl, Rockville, Maryland, yeah, those people, we need to get rid of or put in jail and throw away the key. So we will prioritize the court and be those criminals, and we've got to set up a legal system. I would be definitely in favor of a robust guest worker program. Tourism is important here. My guests are in the summary of a really hard time in the hospitality street finding enough workers. You know, I was a big supporter of the J-1 visa. We need to recognize the fact that we don't have enough people doing a lot of these jobs, and I'll end on this note. One of the reasons we don't have enough people filling manufacturing jobs, I would say two reasons. One, we pay people not to work. We've got to fix our welfare system. We have to stop and summarize and people not to work. And we also tell all of our kids, you've got to get a 40-degree. We denigrate the trades. You know, somehow when we say this, it's basically saying, well, you know, factory workers, you know, that's not for you. You've got to get a 40-degree. You've got to have a higher problem. All works have that. We need to re-steal that in our case. Thank you. You're a member of the committee on commerce, science, and transportation. As a member of that committee, in public policy, in our budget, and in your own decisions, what do you see as the role of scientific research and data? Thank you. I'm all about, like, real information. You know, what is the truth? What is science? You know, science, there's no such thing as scientific consensus. There's basically theories that have been pretty well proven, but, you know, from a standpoint of science, people ought to be always asking questions. So, but again, I think there's an awful lot of science out there that you can pretty well bank on, and we realize the earth is round. You know, we're not at the center of the universe anymore. So, you know, absolutely we ought to be relying on science, but also on information. We want to, for example, one of the real problems with healthcare law that the House tried to pass, there was no information. There still isn't. Well, the other thing we have is CBO score, which was not exactly in favor of the bill. But, for example, very few people are talking about what did cause pre-use of skyrocket, double or triple. Well, I, I developed the information myself. Founded a 5% ads guarantee edition. Been another pretty good chunk of it's community rating. Another big chunk of it is, uh, essential health methods. Well, let's get that information on the table so it will actually guide policy. But what happens so much when we put it around this demo guide rate, and you got demo guides on all sides, including this perspective, I hate that. I'm, I'm gonna come from manufacturing. I know how to solve problems. Start with the reality. Starts with information. Starts with root cause analysis. But what you end up in Washington you see that alternate universe is just, you know, somebody takes a policy position, argues that, well, this is what, this is what the solution is. Okay, we're good. Back it up. Give me the data. Show, show me the proof of what you're talking about. I talked about the war of poverty. I don't know, anyway, else is really to provide the type of graph I have showing this how much we spent. Number of people's poverty has increased from 29 million to 47 million. Poverty rates have flatlined and out of what like birth rates have gone from about 8% to 41%. Not really a metric. You know, let's start looking at information. Let's be honest enough with ourselves and courageous enough to look at reality and react to it. So, that obviously includes scientific facts. I saw some mails over here in the back there. Okay, go ahead. If you've got a mic, just start talking. See the federal government creating and enforcing legislation that will support small businesses in our states and cities while still keeping in mind our world economy and our trade alliances. So, let me give a picture of my, my textbooks. By the way, government doesn't create jobs. Government creates an environment that's attractive for this state. And right now it's not a very attractive environment. We have a $2 trillion per year regulatory burden. We have uncompetitive taxes. So, let me talk a little bit about taxes because this will really speed two small businesses. I can't remember. I would say a medium size manufacturing company. What I've witnessed over the years has continued to happen is the consolidation even within that industry. It's been largely driven by the faculty of Delta Taxation Division. So, large corporations have been set up reporting their cash. And what do they do with the cash? If they can't work organically, it's hard to grow organically a business. So, they start buying up their competition, they buy up their suppliers, they buy up their competitors, they buy up their customers. And you start consolidating industry which is not good for free market competitive economic systems. So, here's my two main proposals for taxes. I've been in Washington now for six years. I've had group after group come in and beg for taxes for it. You know, lower the rates, brown the base. Just don't touch. You know, you name the preference. So, I came to conclusion pretty early on that you're just not going to be able to pass that kind of old fashioned tax reform. So, here's the good thing. I think we have to. Why not make a new, elegantly simple system option? Well, if you like the 70,000 pages on your preference, be my guest keeper. Or, you could choose to comply with an elegantly simple tax system. You can argue what that is, but mine would be cash based billing pay. I had infinite smoothie within the progressive rate schedule. The recipe is to grant your workers to get rid of all the social economic engineers in the tax sector. So, that's the first thing. You've got to have a tax simplification to pass it. That's the way you make it pass it. Make it an option. Secondly, and this is I think the main driver of economic growth and answering your question. We know that the piece of paper that is the corporate charter doesn't pay the corporate tax. Employees and consumers pay the corporate tax. It's a self-inflicted wound. But, you know how difficult Paul Ryan's having lowering the corporate tax 20%. And he's got to pay for it with a border adjustment tax, which I don't think has any chance of passing. So, rather than, and here's the next idea, rather than having consumers pay the corporate tax, let's make the owners pay it. Well, let's make Warren Buffett pay the tax. This would be a true Warren Buffett tax. You trip the earnings to the owners and make them pay the tax. Now, you may sound a radical idea, but it's not. 81% of American businesses currently use that system. They're subject to SLSUs. They're pass remedies. Make C-courses pass remedies. The way you pay the tax, by the way, is just like payroll tax, those corporations would make a backup of holding to cover the tax to the federal government. Tax is basically paying. End of story, except for at any individual basis to figure out, you know, if you have a lower rate, you might be able to claim a refund. It's getting scored. Hopefully, I'll have that scored by the end of the week. Now, what does that do? It ends the government taxation dividends. So, companies no longer have that incentive to hoard cash. It'll free up capital. Everything left in that business, in terms of profit, is available for a tax-free cash distribution to start the tax. It will end up allocating capital more efficiently throughout America, making it far more competitive. And those corporations will be the most competitive globally of any corporation in the planet. It's also, you'll also tax more money. That's what we do with LLCs and sub-chapter S and the incentives for people parking cash overseas. There's a lot of good about this. Finally, the Wall Street Journal wrote about it. It's gaining some traction. Hopefully, we can get that done. And it's coming up with a common sense tax system, a simple tax system. Reduce the regulatory burden. Now, President Trump says he's going to reduce the regulatory burden by 75%. I call that a scratch goal. But it does indicate where this administration is. You're not going to see that. This, by the way, what I completely attribute the Trump bump to is that recognition by this administration that regulations are out of control and at least for four years will have a pause and we're going to stop over-regulating the economy. And that brings certainty to businesses that creates a greater incentive to take risks. And that's all the government can do, is break certainty, try and create incentives that are already there to do as a profit model if we aren't competitive in the economy. Okay? You guys got the mics? Senator Johnson, what do you see as possible solutions for the student loan crisis? Bring down the cost of college. Again, that is a root cause. The cost of college, higher education because you have the higher education economic current tell a problem. The cost of college has increased two and a half times the rate of inflation since the 60s and 70s. So I'm asking people to think, why? I mean, what's so different about what college and universities spend their money on, but their cost would increase two and a half times the rate of inflation? Well, thankfully we have the Federal Reserve Bank of New York do a study on this and said that for every dollar of the federal government poured into higher education, tuition increased on average about 60%. If you do the math on that, by the way it's about 2.1 trillion dollars since the 70s. 6% that's about 1.4 trillion dollars. You know what the cost is? How much student loans are on stand right now? 1.3 trillion dollars. Now back in the galaxy far, far away in my old life, in Oshkosh when I was working in the volunteer base in the school system, one of the things we did in the Catholic school system was something we called the academic excellence initiative. How do you teach more better music? Basically education pro-activity. So back when I typed into my Yahoo search, education pro-activity, I did not dispel it, I get zero results. You think about it, we are still hovering on a 19th century education model, you have the 21st century when we have the marvel of the information technology. We have days like massive online open courses. So we need to drive technology, pro-activity into education. You don't do that with higher educational cartels because it works really well for them. How do you do it? My own personal opinion, move away from the degree process to a certification process. Totally democratize education. I don't care how you learn it, how you got your education in your knowledge, but if you can pass the CPA exam, you are a CPA. Obviously you need things like clinicals for medical education engineering, you need labs off. Again, there will be some combination of it, but you need to open up higher education to competition. And I mean real competition. I mean competition from people who for example, we are dealing with an individual who is a technological disruptor. For example in the buying and selling of stock. This individual is not going to name him because he's not quite there yet because he's educated probably about a half million people overseas, poor children in underdeveloped countries using video. Well, now he's working on a program to utilize information technology, bring that home in America, and offer college education truthfully for a fraction, for a fraction of the cost. Utilizing information technology, utilizing the computer and how you learn, sitting at a terminal, by the way, it wouldn't be 100%. You're not always at a terminal, but you use that effectively. We can do a far better job than a lot more across. It's called productivity. The two areas of our economy, by the way, are at our end, we're not satisfied with. Healthcare and education are two areas of the economy where we're basically driven out the discipline of a free market benefits system. Higher, K through 12, we're pretty well in the monopoly of teachers unions and public education, and healthcare, we got 40% paid by the government, the rest is paid by a third party union. Disconnected, consuming the product from the payment product. Re-induce competition, and you'll really be amazed at the results. I was talking about manufacturing, I would have loved to have been a monopolist. But because I hadn't competed in my prices for a whole lot longer than I wanted to charge, and my quality, and I was across some servers for a whole lot of that. Free market competition is a marvel. We ought to implement more in those two areas of our economy. One more question, I guess. Who's got the mic? Who wants to go? The Senate invoked the nuclear option this last week. Could you provide your perspective on that being there? And do you think that's going to become the norm for nominating as well as legislation? Yes, I know it's been described that we invoked the nuclear option. It was already invoked. Harry Reid, back in 2013, did step back, and the Republicans did back with Miguel Strada, and did a deal where we wouldn't change the Senate rules with the near majority. If the President is, you only change Senate rules with 67 votes. Two-thirds. That governed the Senate for 200-some years. And as Harry Reid said, no, we're going to challenge that. We're going to vote with 51 votes to be able to change the rules with 51 votes. And he broke that. That is the President's Senate. So unfortunately, you've got a Senate that by and large doesn't have any rules, because it can be changed by the majority of people. So I think we start, you know, Harry Reid set us down in very simplistic ways. Slippery slope. From my standpoint, you know, we say the Supreme Court. Now, I know a lot of you will still agree with that, but let me tell you why I immediately supported Gorsuch based on one quote. And I'll paraphrase it. I don't have it completely memorized, but talking about the role of a judge was to apply not to alter the work of the people's representatives. Any judge that likes all those outcomes is very likely a very bad judge stretching for a result of desires rather than the result of the law demands. How can you not support somebody who views the role of a judge as being a judge? Not a super legislator, not a judicial activist. Now, when I met with Judge Gorsuch after confirmation hearings, I was asking me, how can you give me some comfort? This is my first confirmation vote on Supreme Court justice. So you see in the past where judges tend to evolve and become super legislators. I mean, can you give me some comfort? That's not going to happen in their case. And he looked me right in the eye and said, Senator, I'm going to follow the law. I've been studying it. I've been working at it. All my adult life I'm not going to change, but I'll warn you, you're not going to like a lot of my decisions. That was like music to my ears because I know there's a lot of bad law out there and now I go to confirm a judge who can find his opinions to what the law says, what the Constitution says not stretch for the result of desires. I think it's a huge step to the Supreme Court. We need more judges in courts. We need to have the third branch of government stating this lane of ruling on the law, not creating it, not altering it. And I think that were the case. I don't think a lot of these issues would be so divisive. I don't think the abortion issue would be continue to be so corrosive to the body of politics if we would have worked this thing out Democratic. State by state, voter by voter is supposed to have a ninth Supreme Court justice aside for all of us. That type of super legislation, that kind of judicial activism has got to stop. So again, I was completely supportive of my final point of that too. Because I know Democrats are all ticked off and we didn't confirm America Garland. It wasn't unusual circumstances eight months before the election and we made a very simple case to the American public. And I made it here in Wisconsin. Why not have the American people in eight months decide not only the direction of the country but the composition of the Supreme Court. We later got to have the American people decide and they did. And so what we did on Friday is we just fulfilled the wishes of the bill of the American public. From my standpoint, the bill of Wisconsin. The first time since 1984, the sign of the 10 electoral votes to Donald Trump to make that nomination and reelected me for the first time since 1980, a Republican Senator won in a presidential year to confirm that nomination. We just carried out the voters wishes. I can't think of something more democratic. Again, thank you all. God bless you for being involved in these media organizations. Have faith and confidence in yourself and the foundation privacy of this nation. It's about individual liberty and freedom. That's made this country great. God bless you. I'll put up with our Rotary Club today to bring him to all of you. And thank you all for attending. Special thank you to Cheryl Dijksterhaus and Jane Brill for what you did to set this up today. You guys took the bull by the horns and got this thing done. So I appreciate it. From our table, some people were asking me about this banner. We conclude every one of our meetings by reciting a test used by Rotarians worldwide. It's a moral code for business and personal relationships. And this test can be applied to almost any situation in life. It's called the four-way test. Things we say or do. So Rotarians, if you'd please stand. And non-Rotarians if you want to cheat by using this banner, we welcome you to. First. Second. Third. Fourth. Thank you for attending today. Have a tremendous afternoon.