By Allysia Finley

It's hard to believe, but the first time Ron Johnson, Wisconsin's newly elected Republican senator, saw Washington, D.C., was when he arrived for his Senate orientation in November.

Prior to being elected, Mr. Johnson ran a plastics business with his brother-in-law in Oshkosh for 30 years. Although his family had considered visiting the nation's capital for vacation, he said they had always opted for the more picturesque mountains. Perhaps not surprisingly, the first thing that struck Mr. Johnson about Washington when he got there was the physical size of government.

"I saw the [Environmental Protection Agency] building and thought, 'abandon all hope,'" said Mr. Johnson in a recent meeting with the Journal editorial board.

Mr. Johnson, who sits on the Senate Appropriations and Budget Committees, said he's concerned about the lack of White House leadership on entitlement reform. "There are way too many [Democrats] who don't understand how urgent the problem is," Mr. Johnson told us. "We need a Nixon to China moment. We need someone from the party of entitlements to step forward. Nobody is stepping forward."

Mr. Johnson said that he thinks Republicans will continue to push for spending cuts that have a chance of garnering bipartisan support. He likes Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker's idea of capping spending at 20.6% of GDP. Spending cuts are necessary, he said, "to send the right signal to investors and consumers" who are concerned about the country's economic trajectory. Unless the economy starts growing again, he added, Congress will never be able to get the deficit under control.

The argument that the federal government should cut spending to boost economic growth isn't often heard in Washington, but then again, Mr. Johnson is new to the town.

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