First I want to thank all the volunteers and contributors who gave their time, energy and money to help with my campaign. Your help was very much appreciated. I could not have knocked on 11,000 doors and spread our conservative message without your help. It was an encouragement to me that you were so willing to give of yourself freely to help my first attempt at a political office. I will never forget your support. Know that you will always be in my prayers for God’s continual blessing on your life.
This has been a hard-fought assembly race with three very good candidates. My dream would be that each and every race would have the high caliber of candidates that were exhibited with my opponents Chuck Schmidt and Chris Hanson. All of us are highly qualified to represent the 57th assembly district, and the people chose Chris Hanson. I give my support to her and encourage all of my supporters to do the same. The real goal here is to turn the 57th assembly seat into a conservative seat, and I know we can accomplish this if we all get behind Chris.
You can learn more about Chris Hanson at her website.
Thanks to everyone who came out to our event at Jones Park! I enjoyed meeting so many of you. Here is a radio clip covering the event:
I have written a number of statements on important issues affecting our state. You can read them in the “Issues” area of our website, HowardMillerForAssembly.com.
The 2011-13 state budget will be the toughest issue facing the new legislature next spring.
Controlled by the Democratic Party, the past legislature passed a budget with nearly a 10% increase that raised taxes $4.8 billion, raided segregated funds and had a $2.3 billion deficit. These are just a few of the problems with this budget. Yes, Penny Bernard Schaber, our current representative in the 57th district, voted for this budget.
Running a business and managing a family budget tells me that you can’t spend more money than you have. When times are tough, you have to make tough choices so you can maintain the essentials. I have experienced those times in my business and with my family. Sometimes you have to work the 16-hour days to keep a business going, or make that family car last through the second hundred thousand miles. You do what has to be done; you do it for your family.
Wisconsin can’t continue its current rate of spending or the state will go bankrupt. Continuing to raise taxes will only drive people and jobs out of the state. We don’t want Wisconsin to end up being the California of the Midwest.
I support Scott Walker’s plan for responsible financial reform. In an interview with Scott Walker in the Post-Crescent on June 16, 2010, he said:
My goal is to cut taxes across the board. Not just repeal a tax here and a tax there, but cut taxes for everyone.
The other part is you’ve got to control spending. That means wage and benefit reform for public sector employees.
The vast majority of the people who work for government are good public servants, so it’s not about picking on public employees, but pointing out you can’t have wages and benefits here [holding hand high] for the government and wages and benefits for the private sector here [holding hand low], particularly on the benefits side.
Same with retirement contributions. You can’t have the public pick up the full cost of retirement contributions when most people either have a 401(k) or the few that have a pension are making some contribution as an employee.
Those things have got to change. Even minor changes, when you have 69,000 state employees, will have a tremendous impact.
And then you have to tackle other big areas. You look at the Wisconsin Shares program childcare component. Originally, under W-2, that was supposed to be a temporary safety net. Under Jim Doyle, the time limits were eliminated. It became a permanent entitlement and, in turn, it opened the door to the fraud and abuse we’ve seen all across the state. We’ve got to clamp down on that.
Even the independent Legislative Audit Bureau has pointed out that anywhere from 10 to 25 percent of that program is fraud. You’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars there.
You look at BadgerCare and, to me, again it was supposed to be a temporary step up, not a permanent entitlement. I’d like to get more people off the BadgerCare and Medicaid rolls and into the workforce, where they’re not dependent on public assistance.
And, when it comes to the biggest part of the state budget — about 60 percent of it is aid to local governments: school districts, counties, municipalities — we’re going to have to say, “If you want to get state aid, here are things you can do to draw down your costs,” which means wage and benefit reform at the local level.
This governor repealed the [Qualified Economic Offer] — the Legislature joined with him. That was one of the few measures that local school districts had to control wages and benefits for school district employees. We’ve got to go back to something like that.
We’ve got to stop the mandates on local government. We’ve got to open the door toward school districts and local governments buying into lower-costs health care plans.
Those are things where you can help local governments still provide core services without pouring more state aid in that we obviously can’t afford at this point.
Scott has the right approach to the budget problem in Wisconsin. His ideas to cut taxes for everyone will allow people and businesses to keep more of their hard earned money and make their own decisions for their own welfare. This will provide needed capital for businesses to expand and will bring jobs back to Wisconsin and grow our economy. Doing this, in conjunction with the reduction in state spending, will bring Wisconsin back to a solid financial position.
The choices in state spending that have to be made are not going to be easy. In April the Manitowoc County highway workers were faced with budget cuts. I admire the union, AFSCME Local 986, for agreeing to a 5% decrease in wages in exchange for no layoffs. This was not an easy choice to make, but the members of this union demonstrated their concern for their neighbors and friends above personal gain, and everyone benefited from this cooperation.
My goal in Madison will be to reduce spending and the size of our state government. I am willing to take a stand, and some of the choices may be tough, but the result will be a better economy and a better Wisconsin for your children and grandchildren, and for mine.
