“You’ve got to act quickly,” he began. “You’ve got to use your honeymoon period. You’ve got to be bold and start working in the campaign and then really work in between the election date and the time that the legislative session starts … and put an agenda out there. To me, I believe in full-scale reforms, so (that means) a major transfer of power and money from the federal government to the states.
“So you push the obvious things, what’s in the House budget like (more state control over funding for) Medicaid, but I’d go beyond Medicaid and other social services. Transportation infrastructure funding. Environmental protection — all 50 states have an equivalent, why do we have all these duties … overwhelmingly at the EPA, why not push them back to the states? Workforce investment dollars. Even education, I think we’d be better-served if, instead of sending a dollar to Washington, we sent that dollar to our states and kept it in our schools. Those are really big, bold reforms that I think you could push early on and have, as we did with our reforms, it wasn’t a short-term fix, it was a long-term, structural reform. I think the same thing would be true there.”
A reform of work-force investment programs is one idea he said he pursued as governor with state money, instead of waiting for the federal government to act.
“I heard so many employers, particularly in manufacturing, say, you know, I’ve got five (open) welding positions, but if I could fill these, I’d have 10 more. Or I’d hear the same with coding and IT, or health care professionals, physicians assistants, nursing assistants, other positions like that. So what we did, we gave money to all 16 of our technical colleges … but we said we’re going to give you the money, not based on by dividing it by 16, or by students. We’re going to divide it by how you score on your application. So we said, here’s a pot of money. You show us how effective you are at identifying where there’s a wait list in high-demand areas, and how it meets the needs of employers within that region.”
The result, he said, was a focus on high-demand jobs such as diesel mechanics, welders and dental technicians: “We said, you show us where it meets a need out there, because we want to pay for performance. We want to know where we invest, this money’s going to go to put people on a career path where there’s actually a job waiting for them.”
“I think Republicans do well all across the country because we get things done,” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker told me in an interview Monday....
Scott Walker schools the Georgia GOP how they can win. FReep mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping llist.
While he’s on his “you’ve got to…” kick, he can help himself by not saying stupid unpopular things like he’d like to see the patriot act fully re-implemented in the future.
Honeymoon periods are a thing of the past. If Walker becomes president the Democrats will use every tool at their disposal to fight everything he proposes tooth and nail from day one. If Hillary becomes president then the Republicans will do the same.
Everytime I read something like this, I remember that we Conservatives are very, very lucky to have two top notch candidates (Walker and Cruz) who really “get it” and are firing on all cylinders this cycle.
Can’t remember the last time that happened. Possibly 2000 with Bush (or, more accurately, the potential he represented), but certainly 1980/84 with Reagan.