Like we have seen over the past eight years with Republicans controlling almost the entirety of state government, this session of the legislature ended with a GOP focused on a toxic and dysfunctional agenda of special interest giveaways, corporate pandering, environmental destruction and blocking firearm reform. It is the same agenda they have pursued since grabbing power and which has consistently resulted in cuts to education that are never restored, the fastest-shrinking middle class in the nation and reckless environmental deregulation.
The session which ended on Thursday, March 22, saw a school safety package without proposals for commonsense gun reform; the “Dark Store Loophole”—used by big box stores to lower property taxes—left wide open; and a Republican Party disorganized and fighting among themselves.
As it became apparent that voters across the country were rejecting the failed agenda of Republicans, they reached across the aisle and took Democratic ideas and solutions. A bill to create a pilot program aimed at assisting veterans who are suffering from mental health or substance abuse issues was passed. We also finally closed the troubled youth facility Lincoln Hills, which they had been ignoring for eight years, and we made it a felony to purchase a firearm on behalf of someone who is not legally allowed to own one. However, there were many issues the Republicans ignored this session, like compassionate immigration laws, real solutions for lead pipe remediation in Milwaukee and real solutions for the ever-widening opioid crisis in Wisconsin.
Republicans Give Away the Farm to Foxconn
In what would turn out to eclipse even the budget this year, Republicans wrote the biggest corporate giveaway in U.S. history to Foxconn. In a true example of the sunk-cost fallacy, Republicans keep piling bad decision after worse and throwing good money after bad; like wearing an amateur bee beard and then deciding to enter a honey eating competition. Republicans are hoping that the average taxpayer will not realize just how bad the deal they made behind closed doors is, and which was roughly sketched out on a table napkin.
Not only is the corporate giant profiting from more than $4 billion in taxpayer funds, but Foxconn was also exempted from nearly all environmental laws relevant to its business. It will even seek to divert 7 million gallons of water daily from Lake Michigan—returning only a fraction and with no certainty of non-contamination. The fact is, this fiasco has become so unpopular that Gov. Walker and legislative Republicans never seem to mention it anymore. In fairness, if I had written this blank check, I wouldn’t talk about it, either.
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Caving to Corporate Polluters; Rolling Back Environmental Protections
When the mining industry said “Jump!” Wisconsin Republicans again asked, “How high?” killing the state’s “Prove It First” law. This law had been on the books for nearly 20 years and required the most toxic industry in America to prove that they could operate (and then close) a sulfide mine without polluting the groundwater. Even after all these years, no sulfide mine in the world has been able to prove that they don’t contaminate the water. Now in Wisconsin, they won’t have to.
The fact is over the past eight years, we have seen an extreme Republican party running roughshod in Wisconsin, eliminating collective bargaining rights for workers, turning back the clock on women’s healthcare, implementing discriminatory voter ID laws and putting us on a dangerous path with the NRA agenda. They would’ve gone much further this session had it not become so readily apparent that voters across the nation—and here in Wisconsin—are rejecting their backward agenda in great numbers.
They wanted to pass bills like SB 459 to force the DNR to scrap all regulations concerning air pollution; like SB 54, a bill that would make it easier to revoke parole and build a new $350 million prison; and such as SB 169, which would’ve allowed for concealed carrying of firearms without a permit and allowed guns in schools under some circumstances (just to get started).
Hopefully, when we next convene (likely in January of 2019), it will be with a different legislative makeup, and we can make up for the lost Walker Decade with priorities like conservation, fairly funding our schools, increasing access to affordable healthcare and real gun reform to reduce the tragic epidemic of violence—just to get started.
Chris Larson is Wisconsin State Senator for the Seventh District.
