The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com.
Following the election, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, declared Republicans will set the agenda in Wisconsin. Vos and friends have set the agenda for over a decade now. Vos’s Republican agenda is the same old “party over people” play book in which power is the governing principle.
In 2009 and through the Walker governing years they stopped providing inflationary increases for public schools and knee capped the University of Wisconsin with severe funding cuts.
We have fallen from 11th in the nation in per pupil funding to 25th under the Vos Republican agenda. Districts are now spending $3,200 less per student than in 2010 which in spite of a huge budget surplus Republicans have refused to make up.
Rather than funding public schools at needed levels Republican legislators directed school superintendents to use local referendums to secure needed funds. This was while the legislature sat on a $ 4 billion surplus. Republicans want to return the excess monies via tax cuts, so they are seen as winners by the voters.
This past year saw the Republicans mandate phonics as the only reading program acceptable for use in Wisconsin’s public schools. They set forth $50 million to fund this new program. One third of the way through this school year they have not released the money.
Eighty per cent of state governments nationally have partnered with the federal government in the expansion of Medicaid healthcare. Federal dollars pay 90% of the costs.
Vos’s Republicans have so far turned down $2.1 billion in federal dollars for Wisconsin by refusing to participate in this healthcare expansion.
We need a new agenda that puts people first and relegates party politics to a back seat in Wisconsin.
— Hanson, of Elkhorn, is a member of the Walworth County Democratic Party.
