By Representative Brett Hulsey (Wisconsin)
On the eve of my first Wisconsin state budget as a state legislator, Governor Scott Walker and the extreme right are trying to decimate our children’s schools and rob our seniors to provide for their corporate patrons. They threaten our families, our freedom and our future with their corporate-backed agenda.
The Wisconsin Legislature is poised to take up the 2011-13 biennial state budget beginning next Tuesday and move this massive blueprint through at an extraordinary pace. Because while the budget committee tinkered with it around the edges of Gov. Walker’s original wasteland budget, many of the items most damaging to working class families, seniors and students remain virtually intact. Now it appears that the Legislature intends to rubber stamp this deeply flawed budget.
I strongly disagree with passing a budget that is balanced on the backs of our children and families, while funding giant giveaways to large corporate donors and special interests.
And while Republicans found billions to give away to millionaires, this budget raises our property taxes, cuts $1.6 billion from our children and public schools and cuts state aid to local governments that will jeopardize vital services like police, fire and snow removal.
In fact, this budget stops local communities from doing their own road work – even if they’ve invested in the equipment and staff. In this tough economic time, the Governor’s budget takes jobs from the public sector to give to private companies that support the Republicans. And it fails to focus on creating any new jobs.
I will stand against a budget that chooses giveaways to big corporations and favors to special interest campaign donors over the interests of the middle class. For example, millions of taxpayer dollars that are being taken from public schools will be funneled to pay for private voucher schools for our wealthiest citizens for unaccountable private schools. Finally, Gov. Walker’s budget actually increases state spending, despite repeated promises that this wouldn’t happen.
This week the Governor even supported a boondoggle pork-barrel bridge project to build a $633 million bridge for a town that only has 350 people in it. This comes at a time when more than 1100 bridges traveled by 3.5 million Wisconsin across the state are in jeopardy of severe damage or collapse. That money would be better spent making our bridges safer, as Walker promised in the campaign.
Assembly Democrats offer another option: we have unveiled a plan for public education called "Save Our Schools," a plan that restores funding for public schools and job-training at technical colleges, lowers property taxes statewide by reducing the share of education costs imposed on local communities and saves $40 million by eliminating the Governor’s proposed taxpayer-funded subsidy to private voucher-schools.
We are standing at a crossroads in Wisconsin. We can choose devastating cuts, political payback and corporate giveaways, or we can choose fiscally responsible policies that maintain our commitment to public education, create good family-supporting jobs, protect our communities and ensure a thriving middle class.
Assembly Democrats have demonstrated that there is a better way for Wisconsin, but in the near term, we can begin putting a stop to this madness now. Please find a way to make a small donation today to the Wisconsin Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee, which will stage a strong campaign to win back the lower house of our legislature. It could be the only thing that stops the GOP in our state.
Click here to get involved. I will keep fighting for our families, freedom and future. Thanks for your help.