Wisconsin’s freshman U.S. senator calls it the danger zone — our rising ratio of debt to gross domestic product. And for a guy who calls himself an accountant, Republican Ron Johnson certainly knows a bad number when he sees it.

Ask him about his first few months in office, and the Oshkosh businessman used the word “overwhelming” during a recent visit with Tribune’s editorial board — both the size of the problem and the size of government.

He said the problem includes the process itself.

For instance, he wrote a column in The Washington Post a couple of weeks ago criticizing Senate Democrats for ignoring 222 years of precedent and allowing a simple majority to cut off debate, instead of a supermajority of two-thirds.

“Congressional mismanagement has gotten so bad that it has been more than two years since the Senate passed a budget,” he wrote. “Instead, we are now operating our $3.6 trillion-a-year government on a continuing resolution.”

He also points to the fact that the Code of Federal Regulations is 55 percent longer than it was 30 years ago — and that federal regulators added 3,573 new rules last year, adding 24,914 pages to the Federal Register.

He said there needs to a sunset clause, so all of those regulations lapse unless there’s a decision that they’re serving a useful purpose.

Predictably, he says there needs to be a change of leadership in Washington.

“It’s important we don’t rehire President Obama,” Johnson said. “His agenda has made things far worse.”

But during his visit in La Crosse, he also discussed some themes that didn’t necessarily stick to the party script.

On immigration, he believes securing the borders is paramount. But he also believes that, as a nation of immigrants, we should exercise some common sense.

“I’m convinced we can walk and chew gum at the same time,” he said.

For instance, he said he’s open to a guest worker policy because it doesn’t make sense for university schools of engineering in the United States to educate the best of the brightest from other countries and then send them back home with a first-class education.

He favors tax reform, using the philosophy that we should determine the best way to raise the necessary revenue and do no harm.

But he also points out the tremendous amount of lobbying that occurs in the attempt to influence the tax code.

While he believes the Occupy movement lumps all businesses together in a bad way, he says he worries about our growing income disparity.

“It’s not sociologically healthy,” he said. “It doesn’t grow the economy or increase jobs.”

He also concedes there have been abuses in the financial sector, especially in investment banking.

Although he says he’s not a Fed basher, we need to be careful about the risk of monetary policy risking significant inflation.

He questions the credit that Obama has received for his foreign policy, saying that the president has “continued the Bush foreign policies.”

Instead of showing leadership, the senator said, President Obama was either dragged or shamed into action in Libya.

And he’s concerned about the void that our exit from Iraq leaves for Iran, which he described as a bad actor.

“It’s a horrible signal.”

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