SFR Sits Down with Sen. Ron Johnson (Full Transcription)

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Welcome to Secure Freedom Radio. This is Frank Gaffney, your host and guide for what I think of as an intelligence briefing on the war for the free world. We have been witnessing with quite a high drama the senate deliberations this past week on the so-called Corker-Cardin legislation that is intended, we’re told by its sponsors, to give congress some kind of say or vote at least on the agreement president Obama is determined to secure with the Iranians. A man who has stood for the constitutional arrangement for that kind of advice and consent by the United States Senate is our guest in this first block of Secure Freedom Radio. He is Senator Ron Johnson, a businessman, an accountant by training and practice in his native state of Wisconsin and now the chairman of the senate homeland security and government affairs committee and also a senior member of the senate foreign relations committee. Senator Johnson, first of all, let me just express my profound appreciation for your leadership in trying to get the senate to do its duty by considering this agreement if it comes as a treaty. Welcome back, sir. It’s great to have you with us.

RON JOHNSON:

Well, hello, Frank. And I appreciate that. I’d like to just start with the main point here and, you know, I’m still relatively new to this being an elected official here. I’m just a plastics salesman from Oshkosh, Wisconsin. But I’m a plastics salesman from Oshkosh, Wisconsin that for literally years, I’ve been hearing presidents of both parties, members of congress of both parties, you know, just pronouncing that we simply cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. You know, because it’s obvious how terrible that is going to be for regional security and world peace. And yet now we have a president who lost the negotiation from the get-go by relaxing sanctions. And, you know, acknowledging basically Iran has a right to enrich uranium even though UN resolutions dating back to 2006 put sanctions in place and the only way they were going to be lifted is if Iran suspended or halted their enrichment program. And so, you know, I don’t see a good deal coming out of this outcome and the issues I’ve been raising is, you know, first we need to understand that this president is so brazen and arrogant that he is entering into these negotiations and entering into an agreement that he’s going to deem by – on his own authority is just an executive agreement. You know, according to our constitution, article two, section two, you know, the president does have the power to negotiate treaties between nations. But it is with the advice and consent of the senate. What’s somewhat dubious is, you know, any kind of international agreement that varies from that type of approval process – and Frank, there’s no set criteria that says something’s a treaty or a congressional-executive agreement or just an executive agreement. It’s really based on, you know, what determines that is how it’s approved. And so a treaty would be approved by sixty-seven senators in the current makeup. Two-thirds of the senate. A congressional-executive agreement would have to be approved by both chambers, both the house and the senate. And of course, an executive agreement, which is what this president is claiming this consequential deal with Iran would be is simply an executive agreement that he can just undertake and, you know, commit America to on his own authority. And so I’ve been trying to highlight what the bill – and this, listen, the problem Bob Corker has, Senator Corker has is he’s dealing with Democrats who will only agree to the most minimal role, and I’ve just been trying to highlight exactly what that means, and let me tell you what it means. It means a really bad deal with Iran could be approved with basically thirty-four senators approving it with the rest of us thinking it’s a really bad deal. That is turning advice and consent on its head.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Well, and why this is so important, of course, Senator – and you’ve taken to the floor of the senate, you’ve argued, I think, very persuasively for this is that the framers understood that if there weren’t this kind of check and balance on executive authority, if there weren’t this kind of, well, my term at least, quality control, you would find the senate being essentially cast aside, the congress more generally being cast aside as the president pursues treaties or agreements or other arrangements with foreign powers that could mutate beyond recognition our, well, polity, our republic, our constitution and so on. And Senator, I just have to ask what was it operating as best you can tell among the majority, including eleven of your Republican colleagues, that would cause them willingly to participate in this egregious diminution of the power of the institution in which you all serve?

RON JOHNSON:

Well, again, let me blame the Democrats. I mean, it’s just true, the Democrats are by an large happy apparently to let president Obama negotiate this treaty and be done with it. And so at least there are a few Democrats who are willing to say, well hang on here. You know, involved in this deal is the fact that we have – we have sanctions that were voted on, approved, and you know, imposed by congress. And so even though congress offered this waiver to the president on all these bills that impose sanctions, there is a waiver for national security interests, you know, that makes sense. Nobody contemplated that this president would abuse that waiver power the way he’s abusing it right now. And so there are a few Democrats that said, you know, we really ought to be involved, but they’re only willing to be involved at this just bare minimum level.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

And in fact, it really, I think it doesn’t – it doesn’t do justice to say it’s at the bare minimum. As you’ve indicated, Senator Ron Johnson, it is a Potemkin exercise. You cannot actually really now expect to vote down this agreement under the arrangement that the Corker-Cardin bill represents, does it?

RON JOHNSON:

You know, Frank, one of the amendments on this – I was really trying to offer three amendments. Deeming it a treaty needs sixty-seven votes. Deeming it an executive – or deeming it a congressional-executive agreement, I was even willing to go expedite so just require a majority vote. I mean, to me that’s the fair minimum involvement. A majority affirmative vote to approve the deal. I also tried to put in an amendment that actually was, you know, would clarify what this approval process really was. I was calling it a low threshold congressional approval of a treaty. And that would have allowed the deal to be approved, which is thirty-four senators. Now the parliamentarian appropriately and correctly ruled that out of order, unconstitutional because you can’t pass something with just thirty-four votes. Precisely the point I was trying to make.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Indeed. Senator, let me just turn this to another topic that’s very much related to this. Your friend and mine, Congressman Trent Franks has observed that the Iranians have recently apparently promulgated a doctrine for their military which involves on more than twenty different occasions a reference to the use of electromagnetic pulse in an attack against the United States. Were Iran to get the bomb – and I personally believe that they are very much determined to do that and we’re legitimating their efforts to do so – and they get the ballistic missiles with which to deliver it here, perhaps long range ones as they’re getting now or short range ones which they had an abundance delivered off of ships, and we were to see an electromagnetic pulse attack against this country, as you know, it would be devastating to our electric grid and to the nation as a whole, you and I have talked about this before and I know you have indicated a very strong commitment to trying as part of your homeland security oversight responsibilities to get our electric grid made more resilient against these and other kinds of attacks, how important is that, especially if we’re witnessing now essentially the green lighting of this nuclear program in Iran?

RON JOHNSON:

No, we are whistling past the graveyard if we don’t turn our attention to what we really ought to start doing, is to provide some measure of protection for our electrical grid. You know, Frank, what drives me crazy is, you know, all this – all the harm, you know, all the information was declassified on EMP. We’ve known about this for decades. When we first started testing nuclear weapons in the South Pacific and the harmful effect on electronics. And we declassified this in 2004, with the commission then again in 2008. So this was very well known the dangers we face with a nuclear device that’s exploded somewhere up in the atmosphere. And how devastating that would be for the electronics and for the electrical grid. I mean, it’d shut it down. And yet there are some things we could do. For example, we can buy spare transformers to keep them off light and shield them so that they’re readily available. Right now, some of these transformers, large ones, they’re two years in terms of lead time.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

At least.

RON JOHNSON: And so if we don’t have, you know, those backup transformers and there’s a nuclear attack like that and, again, with this deal we put Iran on a path to become a nuclear power. They have ballistic missile technology, Korea has it, it’s becoming more and more sophisticated. They’re making advances. How many years are we away from either North Korea or Iran having not only a nuclear capability but also the type of intercontinental or satellite technologies? Throw up a satellite, let it – you know, with a nuclear weapon in it.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

They’re there, I’m afraid.

RON JOHNSON:

Yeah, so again, I don’t want to scare your listeners, but at the same time, we can’t bury our head in the sand on this thing. We need to start taking measures now. And, you know, James Woolsey wrote I think a thoughtful piece in the Wall Street Journal talking about a two billion dollar price tag. I think that – I think that’s low. I think he thinks that, too. This is kind of a down payment. This provides some protection, some backup. We need to make sure America collectively admits we have this problem so there’s a political will to address it. You mentioned Trent Franks, and he’s been a real leader in the House on that. And I applaud his efforts.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Well, we applaud yours as well and look forward to more of them in the future on this. And so many other issues. Again, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, your country owes you a debt of gratitude for trying to stand the lonely watch on this treaty business and on the Iran problem more generally and of course in your connection with the homeland security committee, your efforts on the electric grid. Keep it up, sir. Come back to us again if you would. We’re very grateful to you. Steve Comrada [PH] joins us next on immigration straight ahead.