the thing to work. I'm like, no one at work can afford all these. That's right.
Yeah, I know. And there's like five other kids who are competing lists. All right.
We're good. All right. All right. Mr. Speaker, thanks for your time today.
Happy to do it, Zach. How are you? Good. So wrap up 2023 for me. How do you feel
the year went for the legislature? You know, I think by and large, there were an
awful lot of successes. If you go all the way back, you know, we have seen some
things where it's obvious because we had a lot of coverage where we had a good
deal on shared revenue, the first major increase in a generation. We had a lot
of money go into trying to create more housing in Wisconsin. We, of course, had
the state budget which invested in everything from schools to local
governments. In addition to that, had good increases for our workers who work
at the state like prison darts. We had some separate bills that didn't get as
much coverage. One that I'm really proud of increased the amount of funding for
literacy because we know that if young people don't read a grade level, they're
significantly less likely to graduate from high school and go on to college. We
had a bill that actually worked its way through the process that dealt with
criminal justice. So we had a lot of good things that happened throughout Wisconsin.
We had some things that were disappointed. They didn't get across the finish line.
There are still some things waiting. So I voted and we strongly supported a bill
to make birth control available over the counter so we don't have a need for as
many abortions in Wisconsin. Stalled the Senate, but hopefully that'll get across
the finish line. We had a bill that dealt with processing ballots on Monday so we
don't have late night ballot dumps. That happened to the Assembly. Hopefully it'll
pass in the state Senate. There were some things that got vetoed by the governor
that were big disappointments. Of course we did our across-the-board tax cut. He
vetoed that. We did our tax cut on the middle class. He vetoed that. We did
bills on trying to have more people get pushed into the workplace to make sure
that they weren't sitting on the sidelines. He vetoed that. So there are some things
that by and large I think a lot of good consensus bills but still more to come.
A year ago we were talking about a reset between the governor and Republican
leaders. Do you think that applies? Can we look at the reset in terms of those
bipartisan victories or is it still tentative? I think it's part of the way
that we've just adapted to how he's going to be. He is an absentee governor
who's very uninvolved in the process. Okay. I mean that was not going to change.
You're not going to change people's stripes. You know Governor Doyle from
what I understand when I was here and Governor Walker were very involved. They
met with leaders and legislators every week. Governor Evers doesn't do that. He
doesn't really want to meet. So we've adapted to a different way. We put the
bill together. We structured in the legislature like we did on the Brewers. We
did it on alcohol. We did it on the shared revenue and it goes to him and he
signs it. That's not a bad way to do it. It just means he's uninvolved in the
process until the very end when he simply says yes to what we've already
negotiated. So we found we found a rhythm. It's not the norm around the
country. It's not the norm of what Wisconsin's used to but it works. You
mentioned as one of the successes just a little bit ago in the budget that the
raises and it took until just this week for the UW portion of those raises to
come through. They were obviously negotiated the first time. Do you feel
like you had leveraged to negotiate over those of them a second time and is that
part of the lawsuit that Governor Evers has filed to try and stop some of the
oversight that the legislature has? Well again this is where people try to
rewrite history. It's been very common that the legislative committee does not
approve the final product until sometime in the fall. So we're in the normal
timeline. That is a bogus argument. It also is true that the legislature has
the ability to go through the comp plan. It's called where they give us a whole
bunch of changes as to the way they want to pay employees what our insurance
looks like. What happens with different rules for regulating the
workplace? All those things happen and it's very common for us to do it. The
Evers administration actually submitted that to us earlier this year. So we're
pretty much in the norm of how the world works. Now are there things that I'm
sure he must be frustrated because we don't give in to whatever he wants? Well
yeah that's the point of having divided government and trying to find that
compromise like we did in so many things. So when Republicans were in charge and
Democrats had the governorship when Democrats were in charge and Republicans
had the governorship and when it was mixed we've always had this process. So
we don't want to fix or break 50 years of tradition that has worked pretty well
in Wisconsin because one governor doesn't get his way whenever he wants. So
hopefully that. But you did separate out the reasons the state worker raises from
the UW raises and then you said I'm not approving those until I get more
changes. Yeah. That a second set of negotiations. No. No that's the that's the
way that we normally have done things. And again there were a lot of things that
worked their way through the process. They wanted an engineering building. They
wanted more money for programs. Those are all things that were part of the
process too. And that's a normal way we negotiate. Look we try to find a
consensus. I give credit to President Rothman and the chancellors from around
the university. They negotiated in good faith. They didn't give me anywhere near
as much as I wanted and we gave them a lot of things that they thought were
important. That's what the world I think needs more of is consensus and
compromise. Not if I don't get it exactly my way I'm going to sue or if I don't
find a way to get to an answer that only I can support. We do nothing. That's
where many of my Democratic colleagues are on a lot of things where it's all
their way or nothing. They voted no on an awful lot of these compromises because
it wasn't everything that they wanted. Well that's the way the world works.
Sometimes you have to accept the best you can get as opposed to think you deserve
everything that you want. Speaking of the UW Board of Regents, how do you
interpret those two votes? What changed between from the first to the second?
You'd have to ask them. I have no idea. Look, we negotiated for months. I know
that the chancellors and President Rothman were in constant communication
with the Regents. I can't imagine they would have come to us and said we have
a deal if they hadn't run them by in an informal way, the Regents. Now my
understanding through the rumor mill is that Governor Evers and his staff were
actively trying to kill the deal multiple times. They didn't want consensus. I
don't know why, but they didn't want consensus. Now ultimately even the
Governor's own Regents ignored his wishes and did the right thing. So I don't know
why it happened, but the right thing happened in the end. Regarding DEI
within the UW system, what will actually change with this deal? Are you certain
that this will actually root out DEI as you've requested or will you just give
it a new name? No, no, no, it's a start. Let's just take one examples act that's
gotten an awful lot of not enough coverage. In the 1940s and 50s, we had a problem
where there was pervasive racism for applications into the university system,
right? If you didn't have the right skin color or perhaps the right gender,
you didn't have a chance to get into the university. Well, smart people at the
time decided that we were going to do a test, the SAT and the ACT over time,
so that the best qualified people get to the university and are admitted based on
their God-given ability. That's the norm for our society. It actually is required
that every student take the ACT test. All of a sudden COVID comes and they
couldn't gather together for the test and the university decides we're no
longer going to use standardized testing. We're going to let people write an essay.
Well, that's exactly what they did in the 1940s and 50s when they had
institutional racism. And now we're doing the opposite where we're saying you can be
the smartest kid, but if you don't do a good essay or do the right DEI code words,
you're not admitted to Madison or you're not admitted to one of the other universities.
That's awful. So we wanted to put the ACT test back in. They said absolutely not.
So we compromised and said we're going to take the top 5% of students in the
university admittance from any school in Wisconsin, top 10% for anybody but Madison.
I think that's a good compromise that wins for every parent so that if you have smart
kids, they don't have to go to another state to be accepted. Why is that a loss? That's a win.
So I think a lot of the things that we did were good common sense middle ground
finding ways to get to an answer that show that DEI isn't about diversifying the campus.
That's what we believe in. We actually want more diversity. I want people to be
coming to the campus no matter what color or race you are. What they want is people giving
special privileges based on certain categories that they like. Well, that's not the way the
world should be. So diversity is what we support, but division, exclusion, and indoctrination,
which is what it's become, is what we're opposed to. So how do you win the PR battle when it comes
to people who see headlines and see Republicans are opposed to things that will help even out
the playing field for black people who have been marginalized or discriminated against in the
past when those are the headlines. But it doesn't even out the playing field. What it does is it
actually gives people a special advantage that if it was 1950s Alabama we would call racism, right?
It's the 2020s in Wisconsin. We don't want racism here either. We want to make sure that if you are
the smartest, best, most capable person, man, woman, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, who cares,
you should get the job. You should get that position. You should be advanced. That's what I think
everybody in Wisconsin wants. The idea that we're somehow going to now use a new filter of race
as a way to offset the old filter of race is wrong. Redlining has been illegal for over 50 years.
It should be. It was horrific, right? All these things that were part of our history
should never be forgotten, but never repeated. And a lot of the things that they're talking about
is repeating the problems of the past to try to fix what they think are still the problems of today.
So I think we have a way to generate a consensus. We have a way to be able to move forward on
people's talent and ability. You and I know that most of the reason people don't succeed
is poverty. It's not race in America anymore. It's because they're poor. Well, let's focus on
lifting up people who are in poverty no matter what their skin color is and not focus on obsessing
on people who are wealthy and perhaps a minority versus somebody who's not wealthy and not a minority.
So hopefully we can find that consensus. In your message talking about this deal,
you quoted Martin Luther King Jr. and talking about the I Have a Dream speech,
how do you respond to black people who are offended when they hear you quoting that?
They say that's not for you to use that way. Well, that is racism in and of itself, right?
When somebody says something wise or incredibly valuable for our society,
everybody should repeat it, right? It's not saying that just because George Washington was white,
the only people that could quote him are white. That would be stupid. No different than saying
somebody who's not African American can't quote one of the greatest people we've had ever
work in our country, Martin Luther King. So I think that's moronic.
Moving on to another big issue of the year, the Supreme Court is taking up a redistricting case.
They have had oral arguments. What are your thoughts on the possibility of new banks next year?
It's not the possibility. You and I know they've already predetermined the case. Everybody in
Wisconsin knows that this is a farce. They have already decided they're going to draw new maps
because Janet Protosey, which for the first time in the history of the country, predetermined cases
when she was running for an election. That's wrong, but we already know what's happening.
So it's not some kind of a big mystery that we don't know we're going to get maps.
Let's remember that Republicans have had this majority in the chamber for 30 years with two
years exception, and that was under maps run by a court, maps run by the legislature, maps run
by a federal court. We're going to win again in 2024 because we have better candidates and a
better message. One of the most important stats that people never want to talk about
in 2018, we had a Democrat sweep year. Democrats won pretty much everything, including the U.S.
Senate. We saw also Tammy Baldwin carry 14 districts that were won by assembly Republicans.
If she had just had the same people who voted for her for the federal office and the Democrat for
the assembly, they'd be in the majority right now. But we have better candidates and a better
message. They are too focused on being divisive. So we're going to have the same dynamic in 2024,
as long as they don't have some kind of an Illinois-style gerrymander where they pizza pie
everybody in the Dane County. I think we'll have competitive maps like we do now,
Republicans will win the majority like we did last time, and we'll continue to have divided
government in Wisconsin. If you do end up losing some seats here in the assembly just because of
the way the maps are drawn, do you think you'll still be speaker? I sure hope so. I mean, that's
my intention. Would you resign if you didn't have enough votes to be speaker? Would you stay in
office? Oh my goodness. I have no I've never even considered that I wouldn't have enough votes
to be speaker. Well, if we're in the majority, right? I mean, that's what it comes down to.
Look, if you look at where we are in Wisconsin, there are some on the far right who wish I had
done something different in 2020 with the election, okay? We've already shown that we can have a good
election in 2022 after that. Most of the issues that happened in 2020, ballot drop boxes, illegal
by the Supreme Court, making sure we have no late night ballot dumps. We're passing the Monday
process. Hopefully that will become law before 2024. All the money that went in from the zucker
bucks to be able to have people behind the scenes kind of manipulating elections and clerks
offices, we have a constitutional amendment on the ballot to stop that. So I think we've made
really good progress. So for the people who had concerns last time, hopefully they accept the
fact that we are fighting for the future of our state and that's not fighting with each other. So
hopefully on the primary side, I win. And then we go back to the majority of our districts where
we are good at campaigning because we represent the middle. We represent people who are on the right
and the center right. That's why if you look at most of the bills that we passed,
they have been common sense, middle ground, making progress on big issues that face Wisconsin.
Do you want to see Donald Trump as the Republican nominee? No. I would prefer someone else to be
the nominee. I think that he is one of the only people who can actually lose. I think if it was
Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, any of the other candidates who are out there, they would have a
significantly better chance to win. So I imagine, I know I will not be voting for Donald Trump in
the primary. But once we get to the fall, I've never voted for a Democrat for president. I'm not
going to start in 2024. When it comes to running Wisconsin elections, Megan Wolf is still in charge
of the WEC. Do you expect that to change at all between now and next November? Look, we have almost
6 million people in Wisconsin. I am positive that there are other people who would just do just as
good if not a better job than Megan Wolf. I think she should resign for the good of the state to be
able to give people the fresh start to know that whoever wins in 2024, they are doing so without
this kind of conspiracy idea that somehow she's manipulating the process. She made mistakes in
2020. Some of those we've corrected. As I said, ballot drop boxes. What happened with the late
night ballot dump and most challenging would happen with the zucker bucks behind the scenes.
Those are all going to hopefully be fixed. We had a good election cycle in 2022. Look,
John Lieber, one state treasurer, Josh Call, one attorney general. Tony Evers became governor. Ron
Johnson or state is governor. Ron Johnson state is our US senator. So I think we took care of a lot
of those issues. And God willing, we have a good 22 election to look at as the model for 2024. So
you know, I hope we're able to move beyond 2020. For me, I certainly have. But we need to focus
in the future at the past. Do you think Bob Spindell should stay on the WEC board? He's not my
appointment. I get one appointment. Dean Knudsen was my appointment. He did a very good job. I
decided to switch out Don Millis, who's an attorney. He's also doing an excellent job.
I can only focus on what I control. That's that's my one appointment. One year from now,
how will you judge success? Coming back with a good strong majority is a good way.
Boy, if we have a Republican president, that would be a big success and better for the country.
Hopefully we've been fighting inflation. We'd actually have a world that looks at America with
respect. And most importantly, we'd have a budget that is affordable for the next generation,
not driving us into bankruptcy with inflation. I also feel like we will hopefully at the time
have the ability to help hopefully have a good strong budget to be able to move forward.
So I think the number one thing, of course, is looking at what happens in the elections.
That's how we always judge where we are. But we've had so many successes this time. We'll have to
kind of work on what's going to happen in the next session. All right, speaker boss. Thanks
for your time. Thanks. That's good to see you too. Merry Christmas, buddy. All right. Merry Christmas.
Only about seven more of these to go. Hopefully. I think I know. I've kind of got it down now.
So yeah, it's all good. Yeah, that's right. Thank you, guys. Well, thank you.
Are you enough? All right. Nice to meet you.
Merry Christmas. Take care.
Zach, keep rolling, Zach. Can you get us a clap for a quick?
Oh, sorry. Good?
Yep. All right. Beautiful. I got that too.