Senator takes tough questions from BHS students

March 21, 2019

By Ed Byrne

The Brillion News

BRILLION – Students at Brillion High School got a close-up look at Wisconsin U.S. Senator Ron Johnson last Friday, and Johnson got a close-up look at them.

The Republican lawmaker, who hails from Oshkosh, had visited Brillion High several years ago touring the Ariens Engineering and Technology Center and meeting with students who were designing and building experimental high-mileage vehicles.

On Friday, in a format that looked like a White House press conference – without the theatrics – Johnson answered questions from the students, and follow-ups to many of those questions.

The students, all seniors, were from a social studies class taught by instructor Jeff Schlender.

Johnson questioned the doomsday predictions associated with global warming.

“There are all kinds of things much larger in significance than anything man can do,” Johnson said. “We are going to be a fossil-fuel based economy for decades … I’m skeptical [about global warming warnings].”

He said there are better uses for resources than solving global warming, and said that temperature variations of 28 degrees have been identified by scientists as taking place over the past 400,000 years.

Johnson said he got involved in politics during the rise of the Tea Party movement. He said President Obama’s criticism of the medical profession angered him. Johnson’s daughter, as an infant, had major heart surgery that saved her life.

Please see the complete story in the March 21, 2019 edition of the Brillion News.