Lasee's Notes is a way for me to communicate directly with you on key issues of our day and to champion limited government, lower taxes, and individual liberty.
How we respond to these issues today, will affect the direction of our state and nation tomorrow.
I look forward to hearing from you about the issues of concern to you. Please feel free to contact me, Sen.Lasee@legis.wisconsin.gov or (608) 266-3512. If you are planning to be in Madison, please visit, I look forward to seeing you at the Capitol.
Freedom of Choice
The leaves are turning, the weather is turning colder and Halloween is just around the corner. And the scariest part of the whole year is on its way, the final two weeks of campaign season. We’re going to be buried underneath more commercials than pumpkins in a pumpkin patch.
Campaign season can get pretty heated, and we need to remember to keep our cool. There are going to be disagreements, and we need to make sure these disagreements are handled in a mature way. Unfortunately one such disagreement ended in violence over the weekend.
On Friday morning, Sean Kedzie, the son of State Senator Neal Kedzie, was attacked by two people thought to be college students. The students were in the process of stealing Kedzie’s Romney/Ryan sign. When he told them to put the sign back, they beat him up and choked him to the point of blacking out. Thankfully he was treated at the hospital and released and is set to make a full recovery.
Beating people to a pulp because they support
a different candidate is not acceptable.
Why can’t we all just get along? It’s too bad this happened, and it kind of underscores the difference between conservatives and liberals.
Conservatives want people to be free to make their own choices and liberals want to force them to accept their way of thinking.
For all the crowing about liberals being for freedom of choice, it seems like that only applies to one issue. Here are a few ways Conservatives have given people more choices over the last session.
School Choice
Conservatives believe in school choice because they believe that parents and students should get to decide how their kids are educated, not the teachers unions.
Last session, we expanded the open enrollment period so parents could weigh their options and decide which school is the best fit for their children. As a result, more online charter schools are popping up around the state and more applications were filed this year to change schools than ever before.
Chalk one up for the Conservatives. For those who oppose school choice: If you have a good product, what are you afraid of?
Property Rights
Before conservatives were swept into office in 2010, people who owned property near water weren’t allowed to repair or renovate their homes if they were a certain distance from the water, basically dooming these structures to eventually fall into disrepair. If you want to let your house fall apart, that’s your call, but the government shouldn’t tell you that you can’t fix your own house.
That is why Representative Tom Tiffany and I introduced and passed SB 472, which lets homeowners choose whether or not they want to make improvements on their house, not the DNR.
People don’t understand that private property rights are fundamental to our free society. Lefties are always chipping away at that through Government control. We restored some of those property rights that make this country great.
Taxes and Spending
We use the government for some basic services, like roads, police, firefighters, making sure contracts are enforced, and we know those programs have to be paid for. That doesn’t mean we can’t get the best possible deal for our taxpayers.
Republicans took a $3.6 billion dollar deficit and turned it into a surplus. The democrats created this deficit while raising taxes $5 billion when they were in control. (and people say there’s no difference between repubs and dems) On top of that republicans, put $109 million dollars in the state’s rainy day fund, the largest deposit in the history of the state, not by raising taxes like the democrats did.
While Act 10 limited collective bargaining privileges, it opened up a lot of choices for taxpayers and school boards. Now local governments can shop around for health insurance plans and choose the one that gives their employees quality coverage without breaking the bank.
As a result, schools can hire more teachers and in some cases reduce class sizes. And despite the liberal warnings, the sky hasn’t fallen. In fact, most schools in the state met or exceeded the expectations created by the Department of Public Instruction.
The increase in choices doesn’t just go to the school board, it goes to the taxpayers too.
For the first time since 1999, property taxes in our state have gone down. This was possible because Act 10 saved the state over $1 BILLION dollars. Reducing taxes means that there is more money in your pocket, and you’re free to use it as you wish.
The sad thing is, Democrats opposed each and every one of these reforms. So let’s set the records straight, liberals don’t want you to be able to choose where you send your kids to school, how you spend your money, how to fix your house, or whose yard sign you may have on your property.
Last session Republicans focused on giving people more choices, and this upcoming session we’ll focus on giving people more freedom of choice. As we continue to improve our economy, people will have a choice where they work and as we work to simplify our tax code, people will have more freedom to spend their money as they see fit.
Being free means making your own choices, and now we know who the real party of freedom is.
National Update
With the upcoming elections, national news has overshadowed the news here at home, so this week, a National Update.
The Wall Street Journal recently did a very interesting story featuring Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin. Here are some good points from that article.
"The government isn't here to solve our problems. We need government. It's necessary. But by and large, it's something to fear because as it grows, our freedoms recede. And as a result, way too many are trading their freedoms . . . for a false sense of economic security." Senator Johnson said, "We’re in over our head, and taxing the rich won’t save us."
While making the rich pay their “fair share” has become the President’s main pitch and his justification for massive increases in spending. While this may sound good to independent voters, the numbers just don’t add up.
Senator Johnson also says: "The tax cuts and war budgets account for just $1.2 trillion of the $5.3 trillion in deficits the Obama administration has run in four years." This reveals something I've been saying--Government doesn't have a taxing problem, it has a spending problem. It shows that the majority of this administrations fiscal problems are from new spending, not inherited problems from a previous administration.
The President has talked an awful lot about the Buffet Rule and letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire. Just for the sake of argument, let’s pretend the President gets his way and he gets BOTH of these measures through. The Buffet Rule, which proposes a minimum 30% tax on millionaires would bring in a whopping $5 billion more dollars, and letting the Bush tax cuts expire would bring in $67 billion.
Sounds pretty good right? $72 billion dollars is a lot of money, until you realize we have a deficit of $1.1 TRILLION. So basically, the $72 billion raised from these taxes are a rounding error. And Obama and the Democrats want to INCREASE government spending.
For all the left’s talk about sustainability, they’re incapable of presenting a sustainable budget. It's important to get the real scale of these numbers into the mainstream. I think Senator Ron Johnson's article does a good job at putting these numbers in perspective.ßßÙ