 special occasion for Sheboygan County. You are the lucky 180, might be 182 now. We even have some seats up here. There are many many others on the waiting list for this event. I am Betsy Alice and it is my privilege to serve as the Sheboygan County Chamber's executive director. I'd like to ask the Chamber's executive committee members to stand. These are really the folks who guide the chamber through all of its major decisions and lay the plans to create in our county a wonderful business climate and fabulous communities. I'm going to call you by name, just hold your applause. Terry Lillisand, Steve Harrison, Neil Larson, and Louis Gentine, all vice presidents. Jim Maxson is our immediate past president. Mike Brookens, our treasurer, is in Germany today doing global business and President-elect George Bruganthes and our 2011 president, Matt Quasius. David Gass is the chair of our business advocacy committee. A big applause for these folks. A few others with us today and pardon me, if I didn't see you come in. So I just looked at the list that we had. We have Mayor Ryan from the city of Sheboygan, Mayor Pullman from Plymouth, Patrick Drinan from the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corp. And we have Gary Domus, who's the president of that organization. Adam Payne, our county administrator, and Mike Vanderstien, who may or may not stand up. There he is waving. Are you have our chamber director, Lisa Hurley from Plymouth? And she was at that table. Okay. Governor Walker, welcome to Sheboygan. The spirit on the lake located in the most beautiful and vibrant county in Wisconsin. I tend to get breathless when I talk about it, so bear with me. I am a newcomer here. I'll always be a newcomer here from what I understand. So I'm careful. In this place, you can jump into the excitement of waterfront sailing, surfing, swimming, sand beaches, boardwalk, charter fishing. You can brace yourself for the thrills of road America racing. Experience the creativity that John Michael Kohler Art Museum, the Above and Beyond Children's Museum, and our beautiful Wiles Center. You can step back in time at the state's Wade House Museum, which is going to be expanding and our own county historical museum. You can feel the exhilaration of bicycling or running our top rated trails, walking our beaches, kayaking our incredible rivers. You can accept the challenge of playing 5-5 count them of the top 100 golf courses in the country in one county. Yes, according to golf digest. From PGA to LPGA championships to the NASCAR race to the nation's cup this fall. And indeed, this is the first nation's cup in our entire country. Sheboygan County is the place to be. The strength of our business community is unrivaled and represented well here today in all of its diversity. Entrepreneurs, retailers, professional services, healthcare, financial services, and a very long list of global and national brands. From Sargento and Kohler to Johnsonville Acuity and others, our chamber has 830 company members, and I can't possibly name them all right now. Or you wouldn't get to talk. Above all, ours is a county full of friendly people who care deeply about each other and about the quality of life that we have here. Just last week, business week, named Sheboygan, Wisconsin's best place to raise a family, due in part to the strength and leadership of the educational offerings here from preschool to postgraduate degrees. So you are in wonderful company here, Governor, and we hope you will visit us often when you have more time to Sheboygan with us. It's the new verb. Governor Walker will share his remarks with us today and will allow plenty of time to welcome any questions you may have. Without further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce the governor of the state of Wisconsin, Scott Walker. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's an honor to be back, not only in Sheboygan and Sheboygan County, but in this hall. The first time I was here, I had dinner many, many moons ago with Mike Mooth overlooking the lake front, and he introduced me to the great view that you have here. Like Mike, there have been plenty of great champions for Sheboygan and Sheboygan County throughout the years, probably none greater than Mike was, but I certainly appreciate the chance to come back. And to be, you acknowledged all the folks here, I want to acknowledge someone who shares a little bit of time with us in the Capitol too, Mike Ensley, who's been a great new addition to the state legislature. Mike, we appreciate your presence. I used to serve in the state assembly, so I know the job there. And actually, one of the guys I sat near and was very fond of back then is your state senator, Joe Leibem, another great leader from this county and really from this state. In fact, I'm going to be up in the northern half of this district after this, visiting a business in Manitowoc. It's one of those short days. I started out in Maple Bluff in Madison, went to Racine in Milwaukee, was just over across the way at the Blue Harbor, not going down a slide. I've done that before with my kids, but over at the Charter School Association and then spend the day from here to Manitowoc to Green Bay, then back to Wauwatosa before taking it off tomorrow morning at five o'clock for our next great venture. But it's an exciting time. And it's an honor to be with you all today. I was talking a little bit with Mayor Ryan before about some economic development projects that we're hoping to stake and partner with here in Sheboygan County. And I'm pleased that the mayor is here, both from Sheboygan and from Plymouth. I'm pleased the county board chairs here and my former colleague. Many of you don't know there's an association of county executives and county administrators. And you may not know this, but your own leader here in Sheboygan County has actually been the leader of that association for all the county executives and administrators. And we appreciate your leadership there, too, as well, Adam. In fact, it's a county well after my heart because what has it been? Three or four of the last four or five years, you've had no property tax levy increase. I gotta love a county like that. That's a place to do business in. And I think of all the great businesses. You did great. I mean, talk about a Chamber of Commerce introduction. You covered the basis. That was perfect. But I think of all the great businesses. I'll be back probably later in the summer. I don't really get time to vacation, but when I'm up here, I'll probably come up to Whistling Straits to spend a little time. And as others might say, to Vacationville, right? Does that kind of take off the Johnsonville Vacationville for a little bit, at least for a day? Although I would give you one little tip. When you think about the great food and the great attractions here. Last year, when I was in Plymouth with Lou, the one mistake I made was on the way out. I hadn't eaten the whole day. I came in for a tour of the factory. And I got so excited, I took a big plate full of cheese, and I ate it all the way over to Tomah that night. Which is great cheese, but little tip advice, eat something more than just cheese for dinner. Or the next day you're not, I know Lou likes to eat a lot of cheese, but you should mix a few other things. And so that's my only, my only tip along the way. But you've got some of the best cheese and some of the best products in the country, right here on the great shores of Lake Michigan. I want to share just a few minutes. And then as was mentioned, I'll take some questions. But it's hard to believe it's been about five months since there was election for governor, Mike's election and others out there. I remember the night the other day I was over at the country springs in Pewaukee in Waukesha County. That's the place where I had my victory party that night. And I said, there's days when it seems like not five months, but it seems like about five years. And other times when it seems like it was just five days ago. But that particular night, you know, after a long campaign of about a year and a half of running, people asked me in my campaign, what do you want on the podium? In fact, it almost on cue. I don't have this at every speech. But they asked, do you want to sign like the one is in the back over there? I got a kick out of that. He actually brought one along. You want a Scott Walker sign? Or they said, maybe you want a brown bag sign? Because you know, I ran a brown bag campaign. I had signs about that. And I said, no. I said, from November 2nd on, it's not about me. It's not about my name. It's about the future of the state where we're going together. So I didn't put a sign in the podium. It's a little bit like this bumper sticker. And it says, Wisconsin is open for business. And the reason I, you can clap for that. And I said that the reason I put that up was I wanted to send a message as clear and as concisely as possible early on, even before we took the oath of office, something had changed. Something was different in the state of Wisconsin. And so we put that message out. And then the two months from through November and December leading up to the inauguration, and we tried to make sure we were in the best position possible, the best position possible to send a message that Wisconsin was indeed open for business, not just an assemblism in terms of a project or talking about something that was just about a sign or a banner or sticker, but ultimately to show that the work that we were doing that we showed that substance had taken the place of symbolism when we were moving to state four. And so starting on January 3rd, we didn't wait for a year or six months or even a month down the road. We took action right away. And literally right after taking the oath of office, I called the legislature into a special session. We brought people in that next morning. We started working on it. And I challenged the members of the legislature. Mike knows this well. I said in the first 30 to 45 days, I'm calling on you to pass our jobs agenda, part of our special session on jobs. Little did I know the legislature would trump that. They had it passed essentially in the first month. And I think that and the great news about it, you don't see it much in the media, but all but one of those bills that were passed in that special session were passed with Republican, independent and Democrat votes alike. They were passed on a bipartisan basis. And that's important because we need to get back to that. We need to get focused on that. The one thing in this state that can unite this more than anything else is getting this economy going yet, because jobs aren't about Republican jobs or Democrat jobs or about Wisconsin jobs. And the sooner we get more people back to work, the sooner it helps us take on just about every other challenge we have out there. What we did in those first days and are continuing to do now, because we're not, you know, we started out well, but we're not finished yet. We've got a lot more work to do. But we changed the business climate by lowering the tax burden, putting incentives in for job creators, particularly small businesses. We changed the climate when it comes to regulation and litigation costs in the state. We repealed the state tax when it comes to health savings accounts so that small businesses, sole proprietors, family farms, others could have access to affordable health care without the state imposing the tax, one of the last remaining states in the country to still do that. We even did something as simple as change the Department of Commerce. Our Department of Commerce right now, which is headed up by a great former Chamber of Commerce director, Paul Jayden, who used to be the head of the Green Bay Area Chamber of Commerce, is now my Secretary of Commerce. We helped with Paul's assistance, put together something that will start July 1st, where we go from an entity that in the past has been in part about promoting commerce, but also about regulating commerce. That's the current Department of Commerce into something that is solely, solely about promoting economic development in the state of Wisconsin. It's the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. It's really taken a model that's worked well in counties like this and other across the state. We take a public-private partnership. We take the benefit of support from the county, cities, villages, others coming together, but also the private sector, the chambers and the private sector in itself has had a great benefit here in Sheboygan County and others. We're going to do the same thing when it comes to the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. All those things happen right off the bat. Excuse me, and I remember about a month in in February, I had a reporter from the Associated Press said to me, he came in my office and he actually asked a pretty good question, which doesn't always happen in these interviews, and he said, you know, I won't go any further than that. But he was writing a story for national publication and he said, he said, why are you acting so quickly? You know, most lawmakers have barely moved in. A lot of governors don't even know where the bathroom is in the Capitol. And here you pass some of the most aggressive, pro-job economic development legislation in the country, and it's only a month then. Why is that? So it's real simple. You see, I spent about 18 months in a job interview. I interviewed to be the CEO of your state government. I traveled from one into the state together. I did parades and sat down with interviews and toured factories and did all those things and talked to the people of Wisconsin about my vision to face the two big challenges we face, which is an economic crisis and a fiscal crisis. So here's what I'm going to do. I laid it right out there. Like it or not, I laid it right out. And I said, you know, like any CEO who takes over a company, you don't wait a year or six months or even a month until after the time that you said you're going to take action, you do it right away. You take action immediately. Because when you face a crisis, any of you who have taken over companies who are in crisis, big or small, know exactly that's what it takes. And so we acted on it immediately. Immediately. And again, we haven't stopped. I mean, that's something that even with all the attention and the protesters and others like the friends behind me and around the area here, which I'm used to a lot in the way, you know, I point out that they have every right to protest. That's what America is all about. But the voices of tens of thousands of protesters is not going to take out and smother out the voices of the millions of taxpayers across the state who know to get the economy going in the state, we've got to be serious about the economy and we've got to be serious about controlling spending as well. That's what we're all about. That's what's about moving the state forward. Now, for us, we're going to continue to do more things that put more venture capital into combination between what the public sector can do with the private sector to help more startup companies. We're going to do more to help businesses like the ones we talked about before this meeting here in Sheboygan County to enhance the lakefront here and off the quarter off I-43. We're going to help other businesses across the state because we know that the more we can get people to work the better off we are. And I know it's already having a positive impact. Last week I was in Rock County which a year ago had an 18% unemployment rate. This morning I was in Racine County which still has about a 12% unemployment. We know we have our challenges here in Sheboygan County as well but we also have seen signs of progress. We've seen real signs of progress and we see it across the state of Wisconsin. In the first two months of this year about a week March numbers will come out but in January and February of this year the private sector created 13,000 13,000 new jobs here in the state of Wisconsin. 8,200 of those were in manufacture. When's the last time you heard that? 8,200 more in manufacture. See that's that's important to have those statistics at your fingertips because I'm convinced as much as I toured the the state for about a year and a half as a candidate for governor and I saw plenty of people were heard no doubt about it. Plenty of people were hurting plenty of businesses particularly small businesses that were hurting. I also heard from a lot of employers who told me you know what we're in a position where we could hire more people. We could put more people to work here but we're just kind of waiting. You know about a year ago it was waiting to see what was going to happen with the federal health care mandate. You know in the past year it's been they knew that like nearly every other state across the country Wisconsin was facing a record deficit and a lot of employers said you know I'm going to wait and see what happens next and probably rightfully so because you look earlier this year down in Illinois which faces similar budget deficit what do they do to balance or at least attempt to balance their budget. They raised taxes on individuals and employers. They didn't really solve the crisis they've got a pension system that's only half funded which means a year from now they're probably going to be back doing the same thing again. Ours is a hundred percent funded in the Wisconsin retirement system but they raised taxes and for a lot of employers I get it they look at what happened in Illinois and they think my gosh I'm not going to go out in a limb and hire more people if suddenly it's going to be more to you know it's going to be more costly for me to operate in this state. Well we wanted to send an immediate and aggressive message both in the transition and now even more so since taking office this is an affordable place to do business and we are heading the right direction and the great news is even on that contrast with Illinois the last couple of weeks we've announced company after company in rock county and Kenosha county in particular where companies have come up from Illinois precisely because of that difference because all of you as employers know you make decisions not based on today but on tomorrow. You want to decide not only where where's this state or this community headed today but where's it had in the future. Illinois is headed towards more problems. They've got higher taxes more regulations and they're going to be back because they didn't have the courage to solve their problems. We're heading the right direction not only with what we've done when it comes to the economy but the other great challenge we face is making sure we control government spending. You know we looked around the country there are 45 states including Wisconsin that have budget deficits for this year. They only the handful that don't are states that by and large have fuel supplies or natural gas or other things that allow them to offset but everybody else because of the economy and in part at least in Wisconsin's case not only because of the economic meltdown but because of years and years and years of politicians of both political parties deferring tough decisions of rating the tobacco endowment fund of rating the patient compensation fund of taking money out of the transportation fund or two years ago what my predecessor in the legislature did was take more than a billion dollars of one-time federal stimulus aid and they use it to plug the Medicaid and the school aid deficit. Was anybody who's got you know gone through high school math knows probably actually junior high math or even elementary school math you can't do all that and then have the economy meltdown and not pay for that that's why today we face a 3.6 billion dollar deficit 3.6 billion dollars well in this budget and in the reforms we passed in anticipation of this budget we said it's not enough to do what other states are doing all those other states on bench are cutting aid to schools to local governments and their universities. But what they're doing there is not giving them any tools. What we did in our budget reforms was say you know what if you do that one of two things will happen either you push that off the local governments and in turn they're going to have to lay off in massive numbers employees in school districts and local governments across the state or which is happening elsewhere or you pass that off to local governments and they're going to have to have massive property tax increases one of the two is going to happen. I looked at them said either those two options is unacceptable either those two is unacceptable. We can't have any more people laid off a public or private I don't care at this point the last thing I want is massive numbers of people on an employment estate we need more people working that less. And I also know in this tough economic time not only for those of us personally as property taxpayers but for everyone in the small businesses in the state that's struggling the last thing a small business needs is a massive jump in property taxes as we're just starting to recover from the economic recession we face. So I said let's be progressive in the best sense of the word. Let's be truly progressive and find a different option and what we did was said let's give our local governments the tools not just for today not just to pass the buck for a year or two but the tools so that long term state and local governments here and across Wisconsin can actually manage our budgets. Let's actually give them the tools to look ahead into the future. For us for that and what we're doing in the final budget the legislature is taking up right now is what we simply did was say let's make a commitment to the future. So our children don't face more dire consequences than what we face today. That's what this is really all about and I think in a way it's working if you look and there's also I don't know if there's any accounts here but I think CPAs would appreciate this as much as anybody else out there but if you look at our budget the final budget for the next two years that starts July one of this year we have a budget that lowers not only bounces the 3.6 billion dollar deficit we lower the structural deficit by more than 2 billion dollars a 90% reduction in the structural deficit that's the lowest it has been in the past 16 years that's the 16 years it's probably lower than even before that but it's only been 16 years that they've tracked the structural deficit here in the state of Wisconsin and that means I'm not just picking on my predecessor that's the lowest it's been in 16 years of democrat and republican governors alike. The reason for that is I looked at what was happening in my state and our state and I said in the last two years since the economy melted down in the fall of 2008 what I have not seen are businesses and particularly families saying you know what I'm gonna go out and get a new credit card and I'm gonna run up $100,000 debt and then I'm gonna hand it off to my kids I don't see people doing that instead what I've seen all across the state are people who've said you know what this was probably a good thing it made me realize I was spending beyond my needs and so people have made they put their priorities up there and they funded their priorities they found out not just with money but in life in general for a lot of people it's been a good thing because they've realized the most important thing in their life wasn't how much wealth they acquired it was their family and their friends and their community and people have made adjustments so that they could continue to live within their means even as the economy changed around them the only place that hasn't done that is government or at least some government somehow but in large part state government and many of our local governments across the state have not made those sorts of changes what we've said in this budget is for us to be able to sustain the kind of quality of life the kind of public safety the other things that are part of a priority of what state and local governments provide we've got to have the tools and we've got the courage to make the tough but important long-term decisions to make sure as I said our children don't face even more dire consequences in the future and again it's working we've lowered the structural deficit in fact I know the mayors and the county officials that appreciate this Moody's you know in local governments we always look anytime there's a bond issue you look immediately at what the national bond rating agency's put out when Moody's looked at our budget it's been presented a month ago and they called it credit positive when's the last time you heard anything called credit positive about a government budget at least at the state level it hasn't happened in fact if anything the last several years we've saw on our credit rating go down it's because they recognize that what we're doing is ultimately having the courage to do what they're not doing in Illinois what they're not doing in California what they're not doing in other places across the country which means two years from now in the next budget we're not going to face those tough decisions other states are going to see it only get worse it compounded and for us ultimately that goes back to my first point that's better for the economy because for employers who are here and others who wish to come to the state of Wisconsin what's the one thing that investors look at the most it's stability I remember about a month ago at the height of all this debate in the Capitol I had protesters 100,000 probably around the Capitol bike you remember those days it's kind of I said it's so quiet now it's actually kind of nice to have a few protesters because the past week well seriously so I've got two high school sons who play football and during the summer my wife and I when they go to football camp at UW Whitewater they're gone for a couple weeks and we said we don't know what to do with ourselves because it's so quiet around the house I said for the last couple weeks it's been so quiet in the Capitol I didn't know what to do myself but I'll take it believe me but as I look at that and I was there one day and I talked mainly did interviews with local newspapers from Wisconsin and TV stations and radio stations but every in some while obviously picked up a little more interest than just Wisconsin I do these interviews and one day I sat down with the guys from Reuters and the reporter from Reuters was very fair very first forthright and he said to me and I look at all these people around and he said what do you say to investors out there you know investors don't like chaos now they want stability he said how can you make the case that this is a good place to do you know to invest in and I I leaned over very nicely but I kind of got in his face and I said you know what because of what we're doing because of the courage we're exhibiting to do what we need to do on a long-term basis this will actually be one of the best places in the world to invest in because while nearly every other government in every other part of the state of every other part of the country and for that matter in many countries across the globe are failing to do what we need to do failing to do what many of you have been doing since the economic recession in the private sector and is making sure that your your companies are stable enough to survive the recession and ultimately achieve and succeed after that government hasn't been doing that we're doing that here in Wisconsin that makes us a more stable a more trustworthy a better place to ultimately do business on now and into the future so that's really at the forefront I'll tell you last two quick things and I'll take a couple of questions before we head off the man at the lot one is you know as much as people and it's quieted down a little bit although there'll be peaks and valleys along the way as much as people look at the the economic numbers and again you know we've had some good numbers the first couple of months there may be times not as good hopefully there'll be continued to be times where we see you know 10, 12, 15,000 new employees in the private sector each of the next couple of months forthgoing we'll know we're on our way solidly not just on getting out of the recession but leading the country when it comes to numbers of getting out of recession I believe we can be there and the reason I believe that is not based on blind hope the reason I believe that is because we've done that before in Wisconsin you know I'm from Wauwatosa but I grew up down in Deleven town about 7, 8,000 people in Walworth County near the state line back about this time 25 years ago we faced almost identical circumstances in this state think about 1986 we were coming out of a national recession the Wisconsin was far beyond where the United States was coming out of the recession we had a major budget crisis in state government and there was a lot of what Jimmy Carter had called back in the 70s malaise kind of feeling like we were stuck here in Wisconsin and then a friend of mine from clear on the other side of the state and Elroy by the name of Tommy Thompson came along and in his first term he talked about changing the business climate in the state in fact he didn't just talk about he acted on it and the things that he did to put in place changes in state government that made it easier to do business in Wisconsin got a lot of grief at the time in fact a lot of people who defend the status quo said you can't do that you can't touch that you can't change things they gave him a lot of pushback but ultimately those policies by the end of his first term in 1990 had helped the people not the government the people of Wisconsin create 258,000 new jobs I talked about a goal all throughout my campaign of helping the people of the state create 250,000 new jobs by the end of my first term some of the cynics in the media said you can't do that would you pull that number out they come out of thin air I said no it came out of the history books it came out of a generation ago we not just had a governor but we had people in the state who put their faith not in the government but in the people and employers in the state who empowered the private sector to put more people to work and in turn the people responded by putting 258,000 people to work in that first term if we did it a generation ago not only can we do it I know we will do it I know we will do it and if I know for no other reason simply on a personal basis I for one am not going to concede that my two sons Matt and Alex don't get to grow up in a state at least at least as great as the state I grew up in that's my commitment to you now the last thing is an assignment before I take some questions as I look around this room as I often do at chamber commerce functions and others out there talking to business leaders people probably going to appreciate what I'm saying more than anybody else out there I see a lot of nodding heads I see a lot of smiles a lot of people affirming what I'm saying up here and maybe someone reporting this would look and say you know what you know you're preaching the choir it's the chamber commerce right well my father when I was growing up was a minister he's long since retired but he was a minister and one of his his colleagues another minister another church was asked once pastor why do you preach to the choir since real simple I want the choir to sing so my question today is simply this when you go back to work when you go to church on Sunday when you go to rotary or Kiwanis or any other function you're at when you go around the state or around the country I need you to sing because I can put all the bumper stickers out I can put billboards up on the state line I could put ads out all across this country but the most effective way to get people to reinvest in Wisconsin or hear or encourage others to come to the state Wisconsin invest in the first place is right in this room you're the choir you are the people who can tell others that you know what something has changed in Wisconsin something has changed in Sheboygan County something is more dynamic and more exciting than ever before we have the tools we have the resources we have the employees and we have the entrepreneurs to make this a great state again and we are but the best people to tell that story are the people not just at this podium but the people here in this room so simply put I'm asking you to sing now somebody I know so you don't literally have to sing because I've heard you sing before Bob I don't know how your voice is on that but I don't know if you're a good singer or not I haven't sat next to you at church but but whether it's singing or just telling the story what I need you to do is help tell the story about how Wisconsin truly is open for business with that I'll take some questions if you like sir can you discuss voter ID and same day registration and I'm going to be going with that well you have a great champion in your center to hear Joel Ibum actually has been the author of the bill that I was the author on more than a decade ago to acquire photo identification for voting Wisconsin my hope is now more than ever that that'll get passed through both the assembly and the senate the hang-up is not that the legislature doesn't want to act on it it's a question of there are some in the legislature who just want to pass photo ID and some that want a larger more comprehensive package I think for a lot of election clerks particularly for those who are now going to have to go through a recount local election clerks as much as anybody will tell you that what a challenge it is to do same day voter voter registration particularly in presidential elections and that's not a partisan issue it's just a simple fact of a matter I remember years ago as in the legislature I talked to clerks from one in the state together and not just for the clerks but for most of our poll workers because most of our poll workers got help them our retirees they have to work 13-hour days and about 5-6 o'clock at night coming in on the presidential election suddenly 500 people show up at the polling location and half of them want to register that day it's pretty difficult so just logistically I think it would be wise if nothing else to move registration back to the Friday before people say a spur of the moment well the campaign's pretty it's pretty obvious what's going on by the Friday before so I mean to me if you can't decide to go by Friday the week before you have to wait till the day of I don't have a whole lot of empathy because I think it's pretty clear unless you haven't been paying attention to which some of us might question why you should vote if you haven't been paying attention you know I think it makes sense to change it I think it would be easier for clerks it would make for all the questions that some have allegations that some have made about improprieties or irregularities and that those sorts of things would be altered or would be corrected I think if clerks had enough time to check the polling lists to make sure people were registered it would deal with felons voting double counting things of that nature one more okay sure what in Madison and the rest of the state sure yeah the person asked me about the election and I said why I'm really focused about jobs and of course as the media often is they then proceeded to ask me three more times about the election and they said well what's your reaction I said well it's it's it's clearly divided state is it this is as close to a 50-50 ties you can get one and a half million votes and you have 204 votes that's before the canvas the canvas as many of us know I haven't looked at elections before it could easily change a couple hundred votes either way just on the canvas let alone the recomb but you've got you know about a 50-50 tie but you break it down and look it's because you had unbelievably large turnout Madison and almost all of it went for one candidate and I just said it's one of those where if you look at it's not that the state's divided it's that you've got largely an overwhelming vote in Madison versus most of the rest of the state and that's a reality I'm not suggesting that Madison isn't a part of Wisconsin it is but although although there are days when Governor Dreyfus was a great friend of mine and and and I remember back in in uh I don't remember him saying I was never hearing this because I wasn't quite old enough to be paying attention to Governor Dreyfus at that time but when Governor Dreyfus ran for governor in 78 he was behind in one of the polls and his only Governor Dreyfus could say he was asking Milwaukee he said what do you think about the polls and he said the only polls I care about are the ones who vote in the south side of Milwaukee but the Polish neighborhood but the but the other but the other line he said that I love is he said I don't know if I got the miles right but he said that Madison is 30 square miles surrounded by reality and I think Tuesday might have reaffirmed that which is why when people ask me about my days I say my best days are when I'm out of the cap I know you said one more but you have one more quick and I'll take it be quicker and then get out the factual thing and how many of you said that we're we're going to be getting the structural deficit reduced too big could you define a little bit what do you mean by the structure sure yeah actually that's an excellent question structural deficit or we're in the past governors and legislators put things in the budget but they don't pay for them all at once so they push them off they push off things like school aid payments for years and again both parties unfortunately did that some more than others but they push off the school aid payments the buying and begins on July 1st so they take school aid payments from the the last buy in and they push them off till July 1st instead of paying them in June so that would be hundreds of millions of dollars that really should have been paid the previous two years so I go that push off to the future they take money out of accounts or for example what Governor Doyle did two years ago we had the largest structural deficit ever is he took all this federal stimulus and all of it he took a good chunk of the federal stimulus aid and instead of using it on roads and bridges and infrastructure which is most people I think thought that's what it was for which you can agree or disagree with it but at least it's a one-time infrastructure cost he plugged it into the Medicaid and the school aid deficit now it looked to him looked pretty good at the time the problem is if you got a couple billion dollars in that now I'm stuck with a budget that has the big hole that wasn't filled two years ago plus growth in programs like Medicaid but I don't have any of that federal money which is what I wore in two years ago so all those things are what's part of what's called a structural deficit we haven't eliminated it entirely but we've got it again 90 percent reduced and my hope is two years from now we'll have it completely gone but that's one of those things where from a bond rating agency which ultimately saves us money in operating because you if you have a better bond rating you get cost you less to borrow and easier to pay off past borrowing out but also just in terms of stability in the future hopefully all of our economic growth is upwards but if you ever got point words down again not having a structural deficit means you're not going to run into trouble again okay thanks very much for your time