The Wisconsin Republican claims “few members of Congress have made a bigger positive impact on people’s lives.”
Sen. Ron Johnson calls his campaign website blog “Just the Truth,” where he makes the claim that “few members of Congress have made a bigger positive impact on people’s lives.”
Maybe if you count all of the people who still buy stamps at a post office.
A review of another Johnson claim—that he “passed approximately 300 bipartisan bills out of committee and shepherded 132 of them into becoming law”—shows he had a major positive impact only if you take into account the fact that more than 70% of those laws involved naming postal facilities around the country.
Data provided to UpNorthNews based on bill tracking at Congress.gov show that During the six years Johnson chaired the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 221 bipartisan bills came through his committee and became law—with only 63 of them (28.5%) not based on naming post offices.
Of the 158 bills that named post offices, only six are located in the state he represents in Congress.
In terms of widespread impact on the American public, Johnson’s only notable legislative accomplishment—what he calls “my greatest achievement”— is a massive tax giveaway for billionaires disguised as a small business tax cut. While certain types of small businesses do now get a larger deduction because of the language he demanded be included in the 2017 tax overhaul, the overwhelming share of the dollars saved in taxes went to the wealthiest 1% of owners of that type of business.
In hindsight, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that contained the Johnson break for billionaires may well be seen as having a big impact on people’s lives, but with a final price tag that could hit $2.6 trillion, it seems unlikely that impact will be seen as positive.
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