The recent gaffes by the Secret Service are indicative of the larger issue of the president's "inability to manage," according to Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who sits on the Homeland Security and Government affairs committee. Johnson appeared Wednesday on
Newsmax TV's "America's Forum."
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On Sept. 19, Iraq war veteran Omar Gonzalez overpowered a guard at the front entrance to the White House and made it deep inside the building before being subdued. In addition to the prostitution scandal in Colombia, Secret Service agents also embarrassed the agency after a lone gunman fired shots at the White House in 2011 and three agents were sent home from a presidential trip to Amsterdam in March.
"What we're seeing with this administration is an inability to manage, whether you go back to the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare website to the problems in the Secret Service," Johnson said. "It's an agency that has always been widely respected, but after the events in Cartagena . . . what we're seeing across the board with this administration is the inability to manage events and manage the agency. The government is out of control. That's one takeaway that Americans really need to realize is that the federal government is dysfunctional, ineffective, inefficient so my suggestion is to stop growing it."
In every way, Obama has fostered an environment of delegation, which Johnson characterized as "a very hands off, lack of management." Further, the president's big government belief system has allowed the system to spin out of control.
"His big initiative was healthcare law, but he had very little to do with drafting it," he said. "He let [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi and [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid draft the law. There's no reason to have confidence in some of the directors of some of these agencies and some of his political appointees have been awful. It's an ideology that government is the solution to all their problems and Americans are coming to realize that the federal government is a pretty poor outfit to control your life."
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