as you know President Trump tweeted that you and your fellow not you specifically
but Republican senators are totally quitters if you don't repeal and replace
Obamacare he's also tweeted that he wants the
Republican Senate to vote on nothing else until it makes good on the
health-care promise is this a good idea to vote again on this bill that has
already collapsed good morning Jake well the bottom line is Obamacare
markets are collapsing across the nation insurers are designed to pull out of the
market so from my standpoint we do need to stabilize those markets and the issue
is not going away you know I continue to have discussions
with governors and House members and other senators in terms of what is the
path moving forward so this issue isn't going away in terms of exactly you know
what the order of legislation I really do think we pry out to turn our
attention to the debt ceiling and funding the government and tax cuts
until we can really get all the parties together and from my standpoint that
really is you know again the Governor's House member Sanders in the White House
on the same page in terms of health care the president has been very critical
about the fact that you and your Senate colleagues just started a month long
break after wrapping up a governance period that's been called historically
unproductive Obamacare untouched as you noted taxes have not been cut the border
wall remains unbuilt what do you say to voters many of them in your own party
who look at the record and think that the Republican Party's failed to deliver
well my preference would have been to stay in session to you know grapple with
those issues I was talking about at the same time getting back in the state and
talk to constituents on Friday I've traveled with the Agriculture Secretary
Perdue and has some really informative discussions with the farmers and
agriculture interests in the state so you know we're not on vacation we really
are working and again I continue discussions on health care as well as
taxes with my colleagues even though we're not in Washington DC let's talk
about these farmers because President Trump is throwing his weight behind
legislation that would cut legal immigration in half over the next decade
you have noted that dairy farmers in the great state of Wisconsin rely on
immigrant workers as currently written would you vote no on this immigration
bill well what I'm hoping is you know the
bill that the senators Perdue and cotton introduced possibly combined with my own
guest worker visa program managed by the states combined with Lindsey Graham and
dick durbin are doing we'll start a serious discussion in terms what we need
to do in terms of fixing our incredibly broken legal immigration system but you
know Jake if you take a look at the facts on average we've been admitting
about a million people with legal residences in 2015 where we have the
best data $0.65 of those were based on family relationships 21% were diversity
refugees asylees and now there's only 14% have anything do with work now there
are literally hundreds of millions of people that want to come in to America
to seek the opportunity that only America really offers we should be
selective we should target those individuals that can come here on a
merit-based system and add to our economy cotton and Perdue are still
maintaining the spousal and minor children priority so again let's have an
honest conversation about this let's try and get the demagoguery out of it and
recognize that our number-one goal should be how do we grow our economy
because we've got to grow our economy so we can reduce our debt deficits we have
the resources to build our military so we can address all these serious threats
facing America a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing legislation now to
try to protect special counsel Bob Muller from potentially being fired by
President trumpets being offered by Chris Coons and Tom Tillis your
Republican colleague from North Carolina if this bill would come to a would you
vote yes or no that's hypothetical I don't see that the Bob Mueller is going
to be fired but I also was pretty pretty vocal saying that I would have preferred
these congressional committees the House the Senate Intel committees you know
finish their work issue their report before we can begin thinking about a
special counsel let's face it the history is special counsel special
prosecutors sometimes they go off the rails they start going on witch hunts
and we have enormous challenges faced in this nation we really don't need that
kind of distraction all right Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin appreciate it
sir hope you have a good district work period have a great day