 Larson and I'm going to be passing the mic as you may have noticed that there's not amplification but it is for the camera and this will be broadcast on public television. What we're going to do just so everybody knows the format we'll do introductions for everybody and then we'll answer any questions and hear from you about some of the issues that you're hearing coming up and be able to address those talk about what's going on at the Capitol and to be clear you know it's open to the public open to everybody in contrast to what the governor's been doing with closed and invite only during business hour crowds so we want to make sure that we're able to hear from everybody hear everybody's concerns and make sure that people know that they can be heard back in the Capitol. Good evening I'm John Lehman from Racine I represent parts of Racine and Kenosha County most recently in the legislature in the fall I was a member of Senator Cullen's committee on mining and I'm on the mining committee right now this is a big week for the mining bill those of you watching the news so if you have any questions or comments on mining we'd be happy to hear those we'll be probably seeing that mining bill on Wednesday for the Senate debate and vote. I'm a ranking member of the Education Committee former teacher so if you want to talk education I'm very happy to talk educational issues I was at a forum this morning seven o'clock in Burlington the forum was essentially taken over by a discussion of the voucher proposals in the governor's budget. It was a chamber of commerce breakfast but that's highly interesting to a lot of people in the Burlington area but anyway whatever you want to talk about we're we're here to listen as well as talk. Good evening I'm a representative Mandela Barnes representing the northeast corner of the city of Milwaukee in the southern half of Glendale. A big part of the budget that concerns me a lot of people in my area are some of them aren't even fiscal items they're the Easter eggs that are inside the budget like the residency. A lot of people in my area are police firefighters who were on the edge of the city and a lot of their neighbors enjoy having them around as we all do it's important for our tax base it's important for our neighborhood quality but bigger issues are the education funding wasn't a teacher however my mother was a teacher and I graduated from public schools in the walk-in. Well what's going on with our public school system that really really affects me I'm very passionate about the issue I serve on the urban education committee we're looking to continue to put more money into a voucher program that hasn't shown results that weren't us putting more dollars into it so that's one of the biggest issues that I want to take out and work on on this budget. Hello everyone I'm Mark Miller I'm a state senator from Bain County before serving the state senate I was in the assembly and then before that then as a county supervisor. Before running for elected office I was a small businessman in real estate and a military pilot Wisconsin National Guard. Now I've had people come up to me in my office and say well as a former small business person and as a 30-year member of the military how come you're a Democrat as though you know Democrats don't aren't patriotic or whatever I just say what you know I believe in doing what's best for my community and for my state and that's why I'm a Democrat. The and if you actually I maybe think a little bit about it what is it about the military is in there you're fighting for each other you are you've got your neighbors back you've got your your comrades back and that's what we should be as a society we should be working the mutual benefit of all of us and that's why I'm a Democrat so I'm glad you're all here I look forward to having an exchange of views and here is my state representative. My name is Melissa Sargent and I'm one of the new 14 Democrats on the State Assembly. I currently am also County Board Supervisor in Day County and I am a small business owner and I am the mother of four children and many people question how it is that I can find the time and energy to be doing this and it's actually because of my children it is because I'm a business owner that I decided to run for the State Assembly. I think it's really important as has been mentioned by many of my colleagues up here today that we offer a voice for everyday people of Wisconsin and we offer some hope and that is why we are here today. I was I think the only one of the people at these tables that was invited to a talk with Walker and it was three levels of security for even me as an elected official to get in to sit down and talk with Walker and we want to be accessible to everyone across the state of Wisconsin as we move forward to make sure that we are fighting for the values of the people that are here rather than the special interest dollars that seem to be pouring into our state. So I'm really glad to be able to be here and answer any questions that folks have. There we are and I suppose I should further introduce Chris Larson represent the 7th Senate District which if you've been to Summerfest that's at the heart of my district goes up to UW Milwaukee and South to Oak Creek and everything in between. I was elected two years ago and have the privilege of serving as the Senate Democratic Leader. So and they and we started these tours I want to say it was two weeks ago now and in that time we have this will be stop number five. So this will be our fifth town hall. We've been through we hit Sheboygan, Chippewa Falls, Warsaw, Platteville and now here in Sheboygan. So hitting and we'll continue to do these and try and hit every part of the state make sure people can be heard. So as you've heard you've got five great representatives before me people who are very interested in hearing from you and willing to answer questions and talk about the issues but the most important thing is what's important to you and what are you seeing whether it's the budget or things that are happening in your community that you're hearing and concerned about just making sure that you have your voice heard. So with that want to open it up to the audience and we'll have we can move the mic up to yet to when Shannon can do that. I just want to ask you if you can break it up for the camera. Yeah, so Shannon can see what's going on. Oh we'll repeat the question. This guy's done it before. Alright we'll repeat the question. So there was a piece in the manual several times this past weekend by the retiring superintendent of public schools there and I'm sure he's an echo of a lot of you hear about the state but absolutely like you know bludgeoned and bled with the public schools and after the huge cuts last time the walkers going around saying that he's restoring one of the schools well it's it's you know he's just making a design and they're not gaining any and there really is tremendous fear on people working at schools I'm not a teacher but I know there's real fear and I'm not exactly sure why why supporting public schools especially public schools especially religious schools isn't so knowledge institutionalized but it is. And the walker in you know in this budget now is really institutionalizing a very right-wing tea party agenda. I mean he's building it right into the financing, into the structure of the public institutions. What do you know about Mike Ellison and the other Republican senators in the Senate? Are you going to be able to put together some kind of coalitions to stop this? So did you, were you able to pick up any of the questions? Yeah, okay. Do you need to repeat it? No, no, no to us, to summarize, yeah Mark will force me to do it. No that's, I mean to summarize the worries about public education funding and about the expansion of publicly or taxpayer funded vouchers for private education specifically for religious ed and then where we're at in terms of where Republicans are responding to that, correct? We happen to have our lead who happened to be chair of education in previous sessions and he was a high school teacher. If you've been paying attention to the voucher proposal it's school districts with over 4,000 kids and two schools that got a lower rating. And that comes out to nine districts around the state. We've had a little experience in Racine because the voucher program was moved from Milwaukee in the last budget into Racine. I would encourage anybody to follow the Kenosha News on this. Kenosha is one of these new communities and the superintendent of schools is out there just saying, why are you doing this? We have all kinds of choices for our kids within our system. We don't need that. We had a school board member who was in the press who said, philosophically I'm strongly in favor of choices and I may be in certain circumstances in favor of vouchers but in this case in Kenosha this was just put on this community by formula without local folks asking for it and you see two real financial challenges. One is if you have young people moving from the public schools to those private schools taking voucher money that's a cost under our current funding formula which is pupil-based. In addition to that if you watch the history of Milwaukee and Racine the school districts themselves are asked to participate in the funding of those voucher schools. So as the superintendent of the Burlington District said this morning you got these two groups, you got kids maybe leaving us but then you got those kids that are attending the private and parochial schools in the Burlington area and then they want to be funded. So all of a sudden you're picking up more individuals in that public system draining more dollars, more total educational dollars from the 870,000 kids that are in the public system. Right now there's about 25,000 voucher kids, that's where the money is going and 870,000 public school kids which are cap. As the budget stands right now you can have no increases in the budgets. All education dollars will be going into tax relief not one more pencil in the classroom, not one more dollar for a teacher's salary, no help whatsoever. So it's a very challenging thing. This morning Representative Voss, the speaker of the assembly and I were at this forum and he's talking about he wants to see vouchers all over the state and there is not support for that. They're going to run into problems with Luther Olson and Mike Ellis who have both publicly said if you're going to do this to a community at very least have a referendum on it so you can see what's going to happen with it. But the whole idea of a couple failing schools driving a new dual system throughout a school district because that voucher isn't just opened up to the kids in the failing schools and it's obviously not just opened up to poor kids like the vouchers and the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program started out as a program for poor children to have equal choices in the schools. What you've got with the governor's proposal is it's fruit basket upset all of a sudden in the entire district. And for example, in Racine we've got I think it's 40 kids going to Shoreland Luther in Kenosha County being subsidized by Racine Unified under the voucher program. So you've got to open enrollment, these kids can go kind of where they want to and you start giving all these kids vouchers and many of those kids had previously attended that school and their parents dug deep and paid the tuition and now the taxpayers are picking that up and the taxpayers don't have the eagle eye of a school board. You know, it's a dual accountability system. You've got all the rules and regs and the school boards on the one side and then you've got this other second system being developed under the voucher system. So just from a pure public policy, what's the best way to watch our dollars? We're losing on this one if it goes through and if it gets expanded. I think none of us can for sure speak for Mike Ellis and Luther Olson but they've been out in public. Generally when a legislature comes out in public and says this is what I'm going to stand for they generally stick with their guns. So we'll see how they do. The Democrats are all on the same page on this. The Democrats are pretty much on the same page. So that's where the three of us go in the Senate. On any vote, if the Democrats all stay together, we need two Republican senators to get up to 17 to 16 in a vote. So hearing from Ellis and Olson both with reservations is a real good sign. You know, they're going to have to either work those two guys really hard or we're going to see a change in that budget. And a lot of policy in this budget, a lot of ideas that aren't purely financial ideas. You know, we want to do things differently. And the Democrats have been criticized for that over a long period of years but it's definitely a huge change in how we do public education. So if you go to these new districts and especially if Representative Ross would get his way, it expanded beyond that. And you know Shiboyan is one of those nine new parts of the state. So did you know you're in a failing school district? He's a Maxwell. We're in Shiboyan and that was included last Sunday. I was surprised. We just found out that they're suddenly in a failing school district. Can I ask a question to follow up on that? Yeah, for sure. I guess I was just wondering if you can litigate anything, but this just seems to me like there's got to be some legal reports here or not. About legal reports? Legal reports from volunteer schools. I mean, first, you know, I keep on going separation to church and state, which apparently means nothing anymore. Nothing. It seems pretty blatant to me that it's a conflict of separation from church, at least for the private schools that are religious. I don't know about some of the online ones or not, but what about legal recourse? Right. Well, this is something that was tackled by the state Supreme Court. Mark, can you speak to that? Not really, but it had to be litigated. And the Supreme Court said that the way it was structured that it didn't violate the separation of church and state provisions of the U.S. Constitution. So that's been something that's already been litigated. And I can't tell you if it was the litigation that was based in the Wisconsin Constitution or the Federal Constitution. I was always assuming that it was the Federal Constitution because that's the one where the separation of church and state is. We talk about it the most, it's that we can't establish religion and so therefore funding of a religious school. But as long as the education is not religious education, then it's okay. As long as children are not about religious classes, about 90% of what happens in private parochial schools is, you know, English, history, math, fire, you know, it's the same. So as long as you're not using those dollars to indoctrinate kids, I think the courts have said, yeah, this is permissible. I mean, it's your, you know, it is an issue and it's open to interpretation. I'm not familiar with the exact details, but I think it was a pretty close split decision on whether public dollars should be going to fund religious education or not. So yeah, it's something where there is a lot of questions surrounding it. I think one thing I'd add to what Senator Lehman was saying is that to punctuate the 25,000 voucher students is that if it was broken out from the rest of the system, the voucher system as a separate school district would be the third largest school district in the entire state. And that's currently, that's before this huge expansion. To be clear about the differences between our community-based public education that was cut to historic levels in the last budget and got a 0% increase. You know, you're hearing that there's money put into it. There's not a penny that goes back into classrooms. And so it's a 0%. It's still at that historic low, but at the same time voucher schools are being increased by 9% for K-12 and 22% for high schools. So they're seeing an increased level where there's this difference in accountability, as Senator Lehman mentioned, and now there's a difference in the funding. So I do think that Senator Ellis has concerns. I do think that Senator Olson also has concerns. And we'll see. I think the governor dared, and if anyone else wants to speak out, I think the governor really dared the Republicans to stand up to him on this one by putting such a huge policy discussion into the budget and putting this policy in there and knowing that it was unpopular with many even Republicans who don't like this to say, well, are you going to pull it out or are you going to go along with it? So it'll be interesting to see what ends up happening. And I think, again, it's the main reason why we're here. It's to make sure that people are aware of these key differences in it. So you think of it, though, I mean, to speculate, whether there will be a lot of pressure on the state like Joe Biden? Yeah. With this school system here, I mean, there's going to be some real objection to the whole project. Yeah. What's that going to do to the individual senators? I think asking what the impact will be to individual senators and individual representatives, it's a matter, you'd be surprised how little we hear from people all that often. And I think contacting your elected soon, I mean, people are going to say, oh, yeah, sure, I'm sure they know what I'm thinking. But you'd be surprised if people aren't contacting them and letting them know this is what I think about this specific proposal, this specific plan, how it would impact me if you have a personal story. I mean, that gets paid attention to. I mean, that gets paid attention to. That absolutely gets paid attention to. The key point on vouchers is to remind Joe, I want to talk about the cost to the taxpayer who's continued to send their kids to the public schools. And, you know, that kind of argument is often heard very well on the Republican side. They're very tax conscious, you know. They talk about that a lot. But when you're starting to get bringing more young people into a system and the regular taxpayer that's been paid for public schools is now asked to pay for that system plus part of another one, it gives people pause. And that's something we have to make sure that everybody knows before that budget is passed. There's been anything on that. I just wanted to add a little bit. I'm a proud graduate of the public schools of Madison and I have small children. Three of them are currently in the public schools and one is yet to come in. And since this was announced by the governor, it has been one of the things that I have heard the most from my constituents about since the beginning of this session. And it is stunning to me that people are pointing out that Madison is one of these failing districts. And I hear over and over again about what equality educational system that we have, a public school system that we have in Madison and how it's inclusive and it provides a quality education for children of all different needs and all different backgrounds and we do not turn people away. And what's going to happen with this voucher school plan if it goes through is it's going to be total unaccountability. And children are going to fall through the cracks and we will have children that are failing with the voucher schools as well as our tax dollars being used in egregious ways. And it is very important that whether your representative agrees with you or not, that you be reaching out to them and reminding them if you come from one of these school districts that is quote unquote failing, you let them know all the positive, fabulous things that are happening there for your children and the other children in your community because they are not failing. Public teachers do not turn children away. They work very hard and it's amazing when people find out that their school district is one that is pegged as a failing district when they have a lot to feel proud of and we need to continue to remind people about the value of public education if we were funding our public education in an adequate manner. I mean just look at that chart over there. It's astonishing. We would not be having this conversation. We would not be needing private culture schools in our communities. Yeah that chart is a very dramatic chart and you know and the point is we're not saying it's adding more money to public schools but none of it's going to the classroom. Which is not helping kids at all. It has to do with testing or websites and that sort of thing. Yeah we're not even at levels we were 20 years ago. Look at this chart. We were in 1993 and 1994 to where we are today. It's just significant dropping out to Melissa's or excuse me representative Sargent's point. What do you consider a failing district anyway? And with the voucher school experiment in Milwaukee there haven't been transformative outcomes that they use as examples. There haven't been failing students that have gone to voucher schools all of a sudden come out renewed and you know just 4.0 scholars or anything. So it's also in an experimental phase and we're funding an experiment that hasn't in 20 years hasn't proved any positive results and especially at a rate at a level that would cause us to abandon our public education which is in Milwaukee public schools test scores are going up. Outcomes are better than they were. We have our superintendent who's doing a wonderful job right now and he's proving himself and test scores are showing schools we're getting bad schools are being handled appropriately and we are celebrating our success stories and in public education and we still have schools who don't meet the same level of achievement as their public school counterparts yet receive the same amount of funding. We have administrators so to say for some of these schools who bring in $140,000 to operate a school of 800 students when we have it's become a profit venture it's almost easier to open a school than to start a small business. That's probably because there are looker stars in Florida that have schools in the back Right and that's the thing you can make that amount of money our superintendent makes a little more than some of these administrators work for the system of 80,000 people so that's 100 times as many students maybe $10,000 for dollars those are other things that have to be considered some people are just in it to make money it's not about education so when they talk about greedy teachers point out some of these I was your administrator So do you hear about this? I mean, the frontier you're making in the day-to-day economy in Milwaukee is there less... Well I can show you Is there a Democrat, a Republican, a Democrat? Yeah, there is and I mean looking through my notes from talking to these other people I mean it's universal do people care about education do they care about a huge diversion from our community schools to fund an entirely new, untested district and Representative Barnes pointed out that this is untested and that's the thing, it's done on purpose this is a system that's not new it's not in its infancy it's not even in its teenage years it's in its 20s and yet they have not gone to them and it's going to be able to compare one towards the other so as it's expanding it's not as clear that this is actually going to be accountable because it hasn't been and I mean to switch the conversation to a larger one about education we've seen the largest cuts in our state's history to our schools K-12 community college and to our tech tech schools and our universities we saw those and those cuts were largely not restored in this budget so we're still at historic lows and with the money that was saved you are seeing that money divvied off to be able to go to people who are called the middle class by the governor by the republicans to say this is a middle class tax cut and I don't know if you saw the paper today that reported that half of it is going to be going for people making well over $100,000 for this tax cut and the people who get the biggest break out of this is the people making $200,000 a year or more we'll show of hands how many how many of them are over making $200,000 or more camera guy no he's shaking his head and we've been all over the state we've heard from hundreds of people and we haven't had one person come out to us and say yeah that's me that's not the middle class no this is a dialogue this is exactly he was able to convincingly beat up public school teachers I mean he combined that with his act tamer to vilify public employees and a lot of people around Wisconsin see that cut as a cut in people who are overpaying on the board now this public system moved isn't that going to shift the focus of the way from teachers to the preservation of the institution I mean don't we see something I mean of course a lot of the parker does his payback campaign which is not sure Scott Jensen's organization put a lot of money into this campaign and people who run a national you know on a national level want to destroy the public school system you know are probably they have deep pockets because they didn't mind them and the people who own the Walmart and the people with initiative they don't care about them so some of that is some of that is a symbol a symbol of pragmatic politics he needs to pay back it's like the 11.34 million dollars he got from mining but aren't people aren't people going to see this now it's not just a kind of bad moment in teachers this is a real attack on public education in one sense the the result is the same you're taking more and more resources from the public schools not just in teacher salary and benefits system but just actually the dollars are moving over to a secondary system so the result is weakening the traditional public schools which are left with the burden of trying to educate everyone not those who choose to go there necessarily but everyone so I don't see it as a remarkably different sort of priority that the governor has I think that was his priority originally to weaken the public school teachers union which was his main opponent in terms of dollars and effort and all that so he sort of accomplished that with Act 10 and then moving over and another effort in the same area with vouchers I was personally attacked by ads from all children matters paid for by the DeVos family and I have been personally attacked by ads paid for by the Walton Clan which are very pro voucher they put their money where their mouth is they go after folks who are not particularly excited about vouchers so I agree with your assessment on that I see it as sort of all one little march they started this thing by kind of moving income limits away from poor people to get the special ad vouchers they're trying to every session that I've been in the legislature which is 14, 15 years every session there's a new iteration of how we can get more resources into the voucher system from the public system so it's a kind of a little march that they're doing here but I agree with your reading of it that there is a stark sort of political element to it I don't know if there's a much of a difference between attacking the sort of the public school teachers and the school system itself but it's in the same direction whatever they've been doing Question about the testing my daughter is from the Kimberley School District and she's in the coming weeks she's going to be testing a test I hope one of you know what I'm talking about what grade is she in uh 7th but she's in 7th grade and they're taking the 7th graders out of their normal curriculum where they'll actually be learning something to test a test and do you know what this test is for are we replacing something that's already in the system I don't know if they've done this or if it's Wisconsinology concepts test that they've been using but you know taxpayers have demanded accountability on schools that's not just a republican thing that's been going on for years so the Department of Public Instruction initiated a series of tests and trying to expand it into more of a guidance procedure there's a whole suite of ACT tests that the state superintendent has been trying to get offered to kids in middle school and high school to help them with career guidance what instrument your daughter is taking this next week I don't know what's being administered but it is a loss of instructional time some people say beyond that teachers are prepping kids for these tests and offering them special activities and practice testing and all that kind of stuff a lot of folks feel that we're a little test happy but on the other side of it is you have citizens out there that want to get their education and so you're going to see some form of accountability testing now we have school by school report cards based on those kinds of scores I think all of us agree that a certain amount of that is due to the taxpayers and one of the reasons we get so mad about the vouchers is because if you don't have a school board to go to and you don't have fully disclosed results on what's going on in that school you should make one side of the system accountable and not pushing this hard to make the other side of the system accountable so I feel for your daughter and the teachers and the whole you only got 180 days to do it and then you start taking 4 or 5 days a year for testing and it just seems to be a real bummer for kids to try to keep continuity with instruction going but a certain amount of testing is necessary so that the taxpayers can be assured that they're getting their dollars worth and that we can just take a look at what's going on and unfortunately it takes time to do that I'll just talk that the governor is rejecting his Medicaid money or maybe I'm going to take it I was going to have some badger care I was hearing a lot about that Do you have a question on that? No I haven't We haven't heard anything about that What about Medicaid? The question is about Medicaid and the Medicaid expansion and badger care and strengthening badger care and what that means Do we have anybody on health? No but I can talk to them Alright this just came out in the budget so we're still finding out the details but basically what it does is Wisconsin over the last 4 years has gotten to the point where the second most number of our citizens covered by health insurance second only to Massachusetts and what happened in this budget is as you know the governor ardently resisted implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act in Wisconsin and in fact is turning it over to the feds and without Medicare rejecting the Medicaid expansion if we had done it here in Wisconsin what he's done is taking a huge gamble he's reducing eligibility I mean what we did over the last 4 years actually it was before that over the last 6 years but mostly under Governor Doyle was to in fact it was all under Governor Doyle was to add childless adults to badger care this was the population that was screaming out was under covered people who were low income who could not get insurance on the private market because they were priced out of it they had to compete on the basis of a single person applying instead of being part of a healthcare group so what badger care did is get them enrolled in an insurance health insurance plan they had it was subsidized some of it was subsidized but they got coverage and what that did that was so nice to the hospitals is that these people could now go and get healthcare from a doctor instead of going to the emergency room the emergency room would cost $100 $200 $300 for medical services that had been delayed because the person was holding on because they didn't have money to pay for going to the sea of doctor what the Governor has done is reduce the eligibility so whereas before you were 200% of the federal poverty level in order to be eligible not only on 100% of the federal poverty level and yeah so it depends on the size of the family but it's like and the thing is that that range from the 200% to 100% is generally there's only about a third of that population that can actually afford the state of premiums under Obamacare so they're going to because they just don't make enough money to be able to do it so there is going to be without the expansion of Medicaid a loss in A the number of people covered and B in federal money that would have come into the state of Wisconsin to fund that expansion of Medicaid for childless adults and I don't have the exact number let me see I don't remember there's a significant amount of federal dollars when they say federal dollars I look at it as this is our tax money that that we pay to the federal government that shouldn't be coming back to us just like the transportation money the real money should have been coming back to us this is money that we pay to the federal government that's not going to come back to Wisconsin it's not going to help our citizens it's going to go to some place else to me it's really a disservice in rough terms what's happening with Medicare expansion so I think the number you're looking for Senator Miller is 66 million dollars is that it? I could be wrong on that it's it's I have a 644 million dollar GPR increased to for Medicaid we'd be ensuring that over 170,000 more people in Wisconsin and what this is going to do is we are going to have people dropping out of the insurance coverage because they can't pay premiums with the changes that the governor is proposing not taking the money from the feds and we also keep hearing from our colleagues on the right that we want to be creating jobs and we're in essence turning away over 10,000 jobs in healthcare which is premium jobs especially as our population ages and we need to get more people working in the healthcare fields so we're going to have a less insured population we're going to be turning away jobs and we're going to be turning away our tax dollars and we have seen many examples of Governor Walker turning our tax dollars away he turned our tax dollars away if you all remember with the trains and he also turned our tax dollars away with the internet expansion and again he's turning our own tax dollars with healthcare one of the basic rights that citizens of our state deserve and this is a creature it's a problem these are not our middle class values that's a good question about who is actually benefiting from this other states other states will be getting the money that's a good question I really don't know insurance companies are generally the hospital association is against what the governor is doing so the hospitals definitely don't view this as a benefit yeah but this is to be clear it's 1.8 billion in federal money over three years that would have been brought into this today and it's 75 million in state general purpose revenue and when it's general purpose revenue that could be used for anything that could be used for local schools that could be used for local healthcare could be used for whatever but the fact is this is changing that because if we had accepted it we would have been funded at 100% 100% of Medicaid and BadgerCare Plus BadgerCare would be funded but under this it's going to continue to be 60% funded by the federal government the other 40% comes from the state and so that's where the 75 million that we would have saved comes from and it would have provided healthcare for all the people on the waiting list people who are eligible already 175,000 people who are who are eligible for it and would have reduced the uncompensated care by 250 million as Senator Miller pointed out this is money that actually comes off of people who are insured or people who visit the hospital and are able to pay their bills other people can't do that they get to the emergency room which is the least efficient type of healthcare we have instead of getting up front care so this decision it really to put it in context because we tend to focus on Wisconsin quite a bit this is money that was taken by Rick Scott conservative governor republican governor in Florida John Kasich republican governor in Ohio used to be George W. Bush's budget director it was accepted by right the guy who passed right toward Jan Brewer who is Arizona the anti-immigrant legislation they all accepted it and they said on the grounds that look this is a humanitarian issue these are people who would be funded who we can end up taking care of so the governor to be completely clear he's put himself to the right ideologically than the most tea party of governors that we have in the country and if you still in Michigan yeah he did too and if you don't think this affects you it's not only we have it on the chart but 10,500 net new jobs that would have been backfitted for the state of Wisconsin in expanding healthcare healthcare access to our state and I just wanted to make one thing clear because the reasoning the governor gives for why he turned it down is saying there's uncertainty about federal dollars he they I don't have the exact figure but it's in the billions the amount of money that came to the state of Wisconsin from the federal government for different programs and even in Arizona where they accepted it they said if the match changes we give ourselves the option to take it back and not do it anymore so you could end it at any point in time so it's not a matter of all the money you'll dry up and you'll be forced into this program not the case it's funded for the next 10 years so it's extremely sad and it's extremely frustrating that the governor chose the ideological path instead of the humanitarian and frankly the path that most people in the middle class and most people thriving for the middle class would have taken and many would have expected it to take so you want to address Medicaid expansion, badger care okay any other questions or topics to hit on, points of clarity with that just because we had the chart printed out we want to make sure that it gets used so we have one more chart that we didn't hit and if you notice the clear discrepancy from the top to the bottom if you look all the way to the right if you see where those numbers start out that's when we started two years ago when the governor started an office and was promising 250,000 jobs now in that time there's a lot of ideological bills that passed a lot of ideological fights that he picked and so because of that we are at that bottom so had we that higher number the number that looks good you know if you're skiing that's where you want to start out that number at the top there that would be where we are if we kept pace with the federal rate of job production job creation so we would be up there instead we have actually fallen behind in terms of all the other states where there's that 90,900 job gap that discrepancy because our state has fallen behind because of these ideological pursuits so we've ended up 42nd in the nation in terms of job creation of our Midwest states in terms of job creation so we we've put forward many different proposals we've put forward the middle class jobs now jobs package which does some pretty simple common things that I think most people can get around like prioritizing Wisconsin companies when we're contracting as a state making sure that they get a few extra points when we're doing these contracts and you guys want to speak on this but we had the press conference on a Thursday two weeks ago and it was literally the next day that a contract was decided for a company called but it wasn't for Skyward it was for a Minnesota company right, right, Infinite Campus yeah, and it's do you want to talk about this one? yeah, I'm going to see what's going on for every private show right they are pissed understand well, ultimately if the contract had been bid out in a way that we were honoring local control and jobs and an investment in our community, we would have seen that by giving it to a company that does a great job and provides the services to 50% of our school districts already we would have been creating a huge number of more jobs we would be following the values of our communities and instead here we are shipping our jobs over to the other side of the Mississippi River that isn't the way things are done when we really want to be creating jobs again, it stinks as if there is some special interest favors being paid to organizations and there's a lot of questions being asked right now and we really need to hold our governor and his colleagues accountable when it comes to what is important for our middle class do you think that's a reversible situation? yeah, I mean it's unilateral it was done by the Department of Administration which is the governor's arm, he could change it and they did appeal it it seems that it has a lot of merits yeah and this is 240 jobs 240 people that they employ currently, yeah in the heart of our state in Stevens Point and Wausau they're actually looking to expand, 600 and so these are jobs too these are not minimum wage jobs we've all worked our share of minimum wage jobs these are actually good, high quality $1,080,000 annual pay jobs they were looking to expand they already have half the contracts of the state school administration right right yeah so I think it's to be completely clear this is something where while we're trying to appease out of state there's homegrown businesses that we're just waiving by too if you saw the state of the state and if you're a good public access watcher, you would have watched it the leadership, democratic leadership we each had these white pins on you probably couldn't see what they were but they each said skyward and there were pins, to kind of point out look, let's try and do something it just makes sense to try and keep jobs for these people who are in an area that's trying to get some and Senator Lassa Democrat Julie Lassa she gave a pin to the governor but he declined to wear it that night but we're trying to figure out what we can do, what we can in terms of our jobs plan we have a number of different jobs proposals I take this kind of personally because I was the chair of finance when the recession hit us the 2008 recession hit there was some concern that it holds national economy is going to fall apart we were confronted with a $6.6 billion deficit as a result of the economy and we put into place the policies and the investments that we thought would create jobs at the end of that term when Governor Walker took over in 2010 Wisconsin was approximately 2 percentage points better in terms of its unemployment rate we were 7 points something and the national was 9 points 9.8 I believe and we were keeping pace with the national economy in terms of jobs created as this chart shows here the first few months the Walker administration showed that the momentum that we had built up was keeping pace with the national economy back then it comes along and that's where that break occurs right there that's when the first of the budget adjustment bills happened then the regular budget you see republican policies do not work it was a struggle the governor claimed he balanced a $3.6 billion deficit compared to the $6.6 one that we confronted and we left him with a small a small amount in that fiscal year that fiscal year was over over a hundred million dollars was still positive there he claimed it was a $3.6 billion deficit but that was comparable to the $6.6 that his predecessor had so those policies work policies that the governor has proposed and the Republicans have proposed have this demonstrably not worked we cannot afford to have that kind of performance in our state we need in order for us to afford on financing our schools on building our roads we need to have an economy that's recovering at least as good as the rest of the nation we have the manpower and workforce to do better than the rest of the country and so that's what our goal should be is not to be satisfied for 42nd we should be 1st or 2nd or 3rd let me just we all get on our high horses let me just make one little comment on jobs creation we've all been watching this 250,000 job promise and it just hasn't come through started two years ago with trickle down tax cuts and big cuts in education we thought that that was the wrong way to go there is a feature in the governor's budget that we just voted on the workforce development committee last week it's called customized training grants he's got about $15 million in there for partnerships and technical schools especially when employers need their employees to have their skills upgraded or where there seems to be a disconnect between the workforce and the jobs that need to be done focus some dollars train those workers and get them into those jobs about $15 million there was bipartisan support for that this week right before the vote I said Mr. Chairman I have to make a comment that this is really what we should have done two years ago rather than the act 10 stuff rather than the trickle down theory on tax breaks let's do something that really makes a difference in people's lives because it's an individual getting some training in the long term for the state because the technical system is strengthened and those courses develop where we really need somebody now and the economy kind of builds based on that training why don't we do more of that and I think that's the kind of thing that Democrats often have been speaking of and are very supportive of the base of the educational system to the economy is so important on the other side we've been seeing things like well if you do these tax breaks or if you give this little income tax break or whatever it's going to make a difference economists will look at the whole Wisconsin economy and how susceptible it is to international changes and all kinds of courses and now their conclusion is essentially Governor Walker you can't make a big difference on this state legislature you can't make a huge difference on this but with training grants and with strengthening our educational system in the long run we can position ourselves to be in better and better position and that's where the kind of direction that we think we ought to move anything else any other thoughts sir I didn't hear that Walker described this mindfulness kind of a premier job premier job program that he's got but isn't it fast I mean we're talking about maybe a few hundred jobs maybe some hundred as we talked about in our life because there's a lot of iron or like they're taking shifts working out there I mean honestly with mining Senator Jalk who serves with me on that mining committee immediately the only jobs that are going to be created on this thing in the next ten years are jobs for lawyers because of the way this entire set of environmental regulations has so drastically changed it'll all be stuff that folks will go to court on the environmentalists and the folks that want to do the mining so instead doing a mining permitting bill which would have increased some certainty on the mining there's a massive change in environmental law so that creates just problems in itself but the biggest problem with the mining bill is the arrogance of thinking that you can have this bill and shut out the core of engineers there's a federal process which department of interior, EPA core of engineers which is not going to go any faster on a mining permit and one of their groups that they support very strongly in the case of the mine up north is the Bed River Chippewa tribe and they have their own environmental standards they're in that watershed down from the Pinocchee Hills and they're going to be drastically affected but to create a mining bill and to say we're going to do mining based on this bill and just sort of blow off the core of engineers in the whole situation especially in that very pristine sensitive area it just seems to me to be way beyond arrogance it's just disappointing the other feature in that bill that's so disappointing is the lack of tonnage tax on that or tonnage Minnesota has that they've been operating mines successfully for years we believe that the net proceeds tax will essentially allow go give it a tack if they could ever get a permit to not pay any kind of sort of repayment to the citizens of Wisconsin especially in the local area there for extracting all these resources so we just think it's unfair on the face of it but we also think it's arrogant beyond arrogant alright thank you yeah great to you one thing and it's not something we've been talking about the selling of public assets power plants things of that nature not overly familiar with the pros or cons of this can anybody share the concept behind it is is with some asset and I'll get the cash and then that'll help our financial situation in the state but in order we the state still going to need that power so we're going to have to lease it back pay more for it because there's going to be a profit built on top of it for whoever's generating instead of us generating for ourselves so it's sort of like selling your highways in some ways you sell your highway and then you expect that you're going to have a good highway all the way through because the private company is going to keep it up I don't think so another thing that's concerning is that most likely purchasers are people who are energy producers or dare I say a coal company producers that are significant campaign contributors and so there's some concerns and then when they want to talk about being able to sell it in the last budget with no bids you know it just seems like the public was if it was the right decision I don't think it is to sell off these assets because it's it's it's sort of like selling off your car and nobody knows how you're going to get to work when they run a car so that's that's the analogy I mean which is pretty intensely especially the last six years and I've just been getting really really sad and depressed I mean literally anything good happening in the state and I don't mean to burn people and they're fun but we were just and I don't think but I mean honestly this man is dismantling that's sad to hear yes I mean we were talking about this state and the 50s and the 60s and the 80s and 90s well and before that as well when the university started all the way back to the 1850s I mean it's just what everything is just negative everything is a disaster he's just symptomatically dismantling the quality that everything Wisconsin has stood for history is there anything that I mean seriously I can like oh well you know this is the good thing that's happening yes I mean there is absolutely I would say if anything there's more and more people who are stepping up and taking ownership of their their votes their community of making sure that people are heard you have bookended at this table right now there's two brand new state reps one of them who is I think second youngest or third youngest third youngest in the state assembly and he's only 26 and so and you have Melissa Sargent representative sergeant brand new in Dane County mother of four who was very active in the protest got even more active and ran for office so you see these 14 in the assembly and there's a lot of new blood and I would also say that there's local officials who are running for office and getting elected and I think more and more people are taking ownership of their state and I was going back to a guy in Wisconsin history Joe McCarthy who's a U.S. senator he he caused a lot of outcry in our state it's important to remember history correctly had a lot of opposition people knew that he was doing the red scare I hold the name of communist in my pocket I'm going to tell you who they are none of it was true he scared the bejesus out of people he was an embarrassment for our state he still is an embarrassment to our state but he ran in the middle of that he ran for reelection and he won but what ended up happening was there was a movement of people around the state who continued to be involved and after he was out of office those people were running and those people then became leaders within our state and brought in an era of good government for the next exactly, Bill Proxmire next two, three decades so while it's frustrating now I think when it's like a light switch when people figure out what's going on with their state it doesn't go back off it's hey wait a second why would he turn down these Medicaid funds why would he turn away there's no healthcare for so many people it's what people realized with the protests exactly two years ago those people are still paying attention I'm really not sure what you're talking about can you tell me about the specific like is there Bill or is there there isn't anything good there is I think one thing that we need to remember is that we have some fabulous things happening in Wisconsin we have Tammy Baldwin we have local government that's turning progressive we have the majority of new freshmen in the assembly we do have a majority somewhere there's 11 new Republican freshmen in the assembly there's 14 Democrats so we may not have picked up a vast amount of numbers but we are growing and because we're there and because we have new energy and we have new vision across the state this is not my district I am not sitting in my district tonight none of us are we are traveling around the state because we care deeply and we want to make sure that you all continue to be engaged don't get fatigued don't feel totally frustrated and motivate the people that are around us so that we can make change we have a lot of work to do we are not done the Wisconsin way is rolling up our sleeves and shoveling the shit you know I'm not going to mince words here we have stuff going on here that we should be ashamed of but it is because of our passion and because of your passion and our values that we're going to be able to turn this around so we do have fabulous things I can't point to something in particular there are some bills that are going through actually on Thursday the assembly is going to be meeting and there are two bills that are bipartisan jobs bills jobs creating bills we are working together on some fronts now these are small steps but half of the assembly has been there for two years or less half of the assembly that is huge if we're going to change the culture of what is happening in that state capitol building it's on the shoulders of us new folks and we'll see what happens on Thursday bipartisan jobs bills we'll see what happens can I get a little depressed I think of the ongoing services and people that I bump into repeatedly when I visit schools and I see the really dedicated people even though they're working maybe they've given up a lot of salary and benefit in their last couple years but they're still working really hard I was at an event a couple nights ago where they had seven people from the DNR and Racine County talking about molybdenum it's a metal that gets in the wells and they set up this wonderful forum where all the citizens could ask questions they got treatment ideas and contact folks the DNR was there for them you still have this ongoing service that's being provided under the budgets whether they're republican or democrat you still have the core services still going on so I get encouraged by that I think that the other thing that has been very encouraging from time to time is the courts the republicans have gone after they talk about going after same day voter registration and they run into a federal guideline on that they talk about something else and a circuit court judge says whoa hold on that we still operate under a system of law and that's in there yet and even though we feel like we hammered a lot the rules are sort of violated we still have that basis as citizens to have that basic rule of law that we're operating under and we believe it's our job to tell the truth we're all in minority here we don't control the government right now but it's our job to be out there talking the truth and to try to educate citizens and to try to build resistance to some of these more radical aberrations to the Wisconsin that we grew up in it doesn't, to me, I agree with you it is a little depressing you sound just like my wife but we still live in a beautiful state where a lot of really good things are happening where government is still allowed to operate and do a lot for its citizens so I try to look on the bright side and to your point earlier about people waking up people just understanding what's going on and wanting to take part myself I was also part of a few of the protests as was my staff person which is ironic because the first day we walked into the Capitol we could actually walk into an office that we worked in versus protesting we walked past a few doors we had some choice words with maybe another staff person back when we were protesting when tensions were at their highest but it's just awakened a new generation of leaders, people who are engaged who were not formally engaged and they're going on with a passion that a lot of people in the building may or may not have had well thank you all spread the word keep on doing this like Melissa said we've only been this is how we're fine we're going on making sure that people know that no actually no it's um yeah I think we had in different ones just to give credit we've had Senator Hanson come with us we've had Senator Shilling, Representative Steve Doyle, Representative Jill Billings we've had Representative Dana Wax we've had Representative Mandy Wright so yeah we've had quite a few and then Representative Danny Rieber and Senator Senator Dave Hanson have all come along with us so and then the next two stops I know we're going to be doing Green Bay and then we're looking yeah we had it for Wednesday we had to cancel it because they're jamming through this mining proposal but we'll reschedule and make sure that the public is aware of the way that's going to be and we'll be back so thank you all