Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson has missed 60 percent of the committee meetings in his first four years on Capitol Hill — including those of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which he chairs.
Between 2011 and last year, the first-term Republican has attended only 83 hearings out of a total of 207,
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports.
Johnson has missed meetings on homegrown terrorism, terrorist travel 10 years after 9/11 — along with three on border security, according to the report.
Twice in 2011, Johnson managed to make to fundraisers, but he missed homeland security hearings held on the same day.
"Unlike many other senators, Ron does more than briefly drop into hearings to simply say he was there; he spends the time needed to hear testimony and ask tough questions," Brian Reisinger, a spokesman for the senator, told the Journal-Sentinel.
"Ron is known in the Senate as a real workhorse," he said.
According to data supplied to the newspaper, Johnson attended 47 of the Homeland Security Committee's 50 hearings since he was named chairman last year.
If Johnson's attendance is counted at Senate work sessions, where committee members vote on bills, he participated in 167 hearings out of a total of 298 — a 56 percent attendance rate.
"Chairman Johnson is the worst kind of hypocrite," Kory Kozlowski, executive director of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, told the Journal-Sentinel. "He says national security is his most important issue.
"But until 2015, he barely showed up to work on critical committee hearings regarding our homeland security," Kozlowski said.
Johnson is being challenged by former Democrat Russ Feingold, whom he defeated in 2010.
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