WASHINGTON – On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) spoke on the Senate floor in the early hours of the morning in an effort to fight the passage of the Ukraine spending bill that failed to secure the U.S. border and would send $60 billion to secure Ukraine’s instead. 

Listen to Sen. Johnson’s full remarks here.

On the need for Congress to secure our border and keep Americans safe

“I wish that was the primary debate we were having right now, is ‘what do we need to do to secure our border? What should the United States Senate, what should Congress, what should this administration be doing to keep Americans safe?’ Unfortunately, this was pretty well taken off the table. Not because Republicans were reluctant to join in a bipartisan immigration bill, we never asked for that, what we asked for is as long as the Administration had a high priority of supplying another $60+ billion to Ukraine, to help Ukraine secure its border, we thought maybe, just maybe, we could use that as leverage to force the Administration to secure our border.”

On the magnitude of Biden’s border crisis 

“I think it’s pretty obvious, looking at the numbers, that about 6 million people since the start of the Biden administration have entered this country illegally and have stayed. We really do not know who these people are. We definitely don’t know who these people are, the close to 2 million gotaways, known and unknown. By the way, the known gotaway, that’s kind of a misnomer. We have no idea who these people are. We just detected them coming across the border. So again, about 6 million people total. 31 states have a population of less than 6 million people. My state, Wisconsin, is out in the bubble. We’re about 5.8, 5.9 [million] people. That’s the order of the magnitude of the migrant flow that President Biden, using the same executive authority that President Trump used to secure the border, used to open it wide open and put our nation at risk. When you listen to FBI Director Wray and other law enforcement officials talk about the current threat level, Director Wray in front of testimony in both House and Senate says all the warning signs were flashing. The threat of foreign terrorist organizations has not been higher since 9/11. Gee, I wonder how a foreign terrorist fighter could enter this country?”

On the need to end the bloody stalemate

“Vladimir Putin is an evil war criminal. Make no mistake about it. We all agree on that. Vladimir Putin is an evil war criminal. He did not have to invade Ukraine. There's no justification for what he did, but he did it. We are now about two years into this bloodbath and now we're in a bloody stalemate. And the reality that I think a lot of my colleagues are supporting this aid package are ignoring is that Vladimir Putin will not lose this war. Losing the war is existential for Vladimir Putin.”

 
On the awful reality of the destruction of Ukraine

“If you're really concerned about the Ukrainian people, well, you ought to be concerned about what is happening to their country. It's hard to get the exact statistics, but I've got something like 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed in action, 10,000-40,000 civilians, 100,000-120,000 Ukrainians wounded. I've heard other estimates far higher than that. Russia's got about 120,000 soldiers killed in action, wounded almost 200,000. This is a bloody stalemate. I've seen some estimates of the destruction of Ukraine approaching, if not surpassing, $1 trillion. So, again, the awful reality that we need to face if we're really going to vote to add $60 billion of fuel to the fire of a bloody stalemate is what the result of that is going to be.”

On the values that we share as Americans and how our leaders have led us astray 

“We send our sons and daughters overseas to help other people fight for what we have —freedom. For those universal goals and values that we all cherish: safety, security, prosperity, opportunity. That's what Americans want for not only ourselves and our children, but for everybody on the planet. We are good people. We are a good country. We have had leaders, we have the military industrial complex, we have agencies that are far from perfect, I think have led us astray. As a nation, we better start taking a look back and going, ‘what was the result of that intervention?’”

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