By RICK OLIVO

Wisconsin's junior senator predicts that the United States is headed towards a Greece-like catastrophe unless it gets its fiscal house in order.

Ron Johnson, the freshman Republican U.S. Senator from Oshkosh said Friday in an interview with The Daily Press that the recent congressional action raising the debt limit didn't address the fundamental ills underlying the American economy.

"We are facing the fact that we didn't solve the problem," Johnson said. "The reason I ran for office, and the problem that is still on the table, is the fact that we are bankrupting this nation." 

Johnson said the nation's debt was 14 trillion dollars, the size of the total economy.

"That is a very dangerous place for any nation-state to be in," he said. "Economists have been writing books about this and it doesn't end well."

Johnson said it isn't necessary to go very far to see what the results of this kind of debt can be. He noted that Greece's current financial difficulties have grown out of their debt to gross economic product exceeded 127 percent.

"The European Union was able to step in and try and backstop that, but still, Greece's borrowing cost went from 9.3 percent to 17.7 percent. That is what debt crisis looks like. The day I fear, and the day we all should fear is the day of reckoning when people who buy US bonds take a look at the United States government and go 'I don't think I want to loan you money any more.'"

Johnson said for every one percent increase in interest rates, the cost of borrowing would go up 150 billion dollars.

"If we experience the kind of debt crisis that Greece had, where interest went up by eight percent, it would cost us 1.2 trillion dollars. That is more than the discretionary amount of our budget, it's about a third of the whole federal budget," he said.

Johnson said the debt deal only cut real spending by a minute quantity.

"We are not cutting spending, we are only reducing the rate of growth of spending," he said.

That is not nearly enough to impact the ballooning debt.

Johnson says there has been a great reluctance to attack the root cause of expanding debt, which includes constantly growing entitlement programs.

"I think America in general is pretty schizophrenic in terms of this whole issue," he said.

Nevertheless, he said he believes that attitude is changing.

"Collectively, certainly for the first time in my life, American citizens realize this is unsustainable; it can't go on," he said.

Johnson cited support for not increasing the debt ceiling as one manifestation of this changed attitude.

"We recognize that we can't continue to do this,' he said.

Nevertheless, he said that increasing the debt limit was a necessary evil.

"There is no way you stop deficit spending on a dime. It has taken us decades to get into this problem. It will take us years to get out of it," he said.

Johnson called for a constitutional limitation on spending and limiting the size of government to about 18 percent of the size of the economy.

He said that should be coupled to initiatives to grow the economy.

"What I would like to see is all of Washington's policies directed toward economic growth, job creation. We need more revenue, but we need to grow it the old-fashioned way, by growing our economy.

And the way to do that is to "get government out of the way," Johnson said, asserting that the growth of government in the United States was on a path to match "socialist European government levels.

"We know what works in this country: Free market capitalism. It's not perfect, but it's the best economic model in the history of mankind," he said, pointing out the historic productivity of the American economy.

"But we are not going to be able to continue to do that if we continue to grow a government that really strangles job creation and economic growth."

He said that was the biggest battle faced by the upcoming session in congress.

"Let's be realistic, we have a very strong ideological divide in this country. I think fiscal conservatives are unfairly painted as not compassionate. I think that all Americans in general have a very compassionate side; we want to help people to help themselves, we want a strong social safety net.

The divide he said comes because some people want government to provide everything for people, he said.

"Others of us think that actually causes harm, there are severe, unintended consequences for doing that," he said, saying it fostered a culture of entitlement and dependency.

"From my standpoint the root cause is really the size of government," he said.

Johnson said Democrats tended to support and defend the institutions of "big government," a system that Johnson said was unsustainable.

Johnson said he was not afraid to talk about entitlement reform, asserting that proposed changes would not affect those currently receiving benefits.

Johnson said in his travels, without exception young people he spoke with did not believe they would get any benefits from Social Security and Medicare.

"It tells me that these young people recognize that we have some real structural problems with these programs," he said. "It tells me that there is a real receptive audience for reform of these programs. We need to reform those programs; everything should be on the table. If we had partners who were willing to negotiate in good faith on the other side of the aisle, I think we could get it done."

However, Johnson said he believed there would be little movement on these matters before the 2012 election.

"I talk about President Obama not negotiating in good faith and I believe that. He says he is for the grand bargain; well if he was for the grand bargain, why didn't he put it in the budget he presented in February. His budget would have added 12 trillion dollars to the nation's debt.”

Johnson said because of Obama's "unrealistic" revenue projections, the nation could be facing an additional deficit of up to $10 trillion in additional deficit spending over the next 10 years. He said Obama's budget was "unserious" and failed even in a Democratically-controlled senate.

"I am looking at the reality of the situation. I don't see a willing partner, someone to negotiate with on the other side, so I don't think we are going to solve the problem before 2012. We are going to have to make the case to the American people how urgent the problem is, how we do have to address this and hopefully the American people will send people who will seriously address the problem to Congress next time."

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