Mr. President, with all due respect, I wish President Trump could have heard some of
the words I just heard right now.
A couple of things.
First of all, I've got to tell you what really truly bothers me.
One of the things that bothers me is the fact that Governor Walker couldn't answer a simple
question.
Governor Walker's gone on record a couple of different times saying that we Wisconsin
was not the highest bidder.
We were not the highest bidder.
When I asked his agency heads who was, they couldn't answer the question.
I want to know who the highest bidder was.
That's important to me because I don't think there was a higher bidder.
I really don't.
And I don't think the Governor's telling the truth on this.
We're giving away $3 billion.
We're giving it away.
So that's the one thing personally and all of this process aside from the fact that, you
know, I think we could have got a better deal, but the fact that the Governor won't answer
a question.
If he can say that as a fact, he certainly can tell us what state bid higher.
And that bothers me.
On the overall look at it, this is a game changer.
I agree.
We need the jobs.
I agree.
These are high tech manufacturing jobs that hopefully will pay what this company says
it will pay for.
What this amendment does goes above and beyond, the game changing, goes above and beyond
maybe what some of you intentionally want it to do, but others may not know exactly
what you are doing with this.
The entire state can be a zone.
And within that zone, any new manufacturer coming into that zone can bypass environmental
laws that we have on our books.
Any new manufacturer related to Foxconn, not related to Foxconn, and any entity within
that zone, which, again, could be the entire state, can take a shortcut and forget due
process and get right to the Supreme Court after one circuit court motion or order.
That applies to every company in this state.
If the zone isn't a state, but just southeastern Wisconsin is a state, then it's an unfair
advantage to those locating within the zone because companies outside of the zone will
have to follow different environmental laws.
Companies outside of the zone will have to use due process.
I don't know if you've thought this through.
I really don't know if you have.
So if I'm Weedick, the company that we are going to give $3 billion to negotiate a deal
to an agency that sometimes can't be remembered where it parked its car, we're going to let
all this money go.
They're saying, trust us, we'll negotiate a deal.
We're not voting on the final package here.
We're voting to give Weedick $3 billion to go out and cut a deal for us.
That's what we're doing here.
So you're going to have company A outside of the zone and company B inside of the zone.
The A has different laws and different court process that they will have to follow.
Company B does not.
Is that good for the rest of the state if the entire state isn't a zone?
Is that fair?
If I'm sitting up in the Chippewa Valley and I'm not a zone and I'm losing out on major
manufacturers coming to my neck of the woods because I go to southeast Wisconsin to get
a better environmental deal and a better court deal, why the hell would I want to go to the
Chippewa Valley?
How fair is that?
So it leaves me to believe that Weedick only has one option here and that's to make the
entire state one of these zones.
And if they do that, we are then bypassing environmental laws.
We are bypassing due process and these environmental laws are on the books for a reason.
There's a reason why we should have to get permits to do what we want to do.
There's a reason why there should be DNR sign off on some things, a lot of things.
But again, if you set up that zone, that's not going to happen.
So yeah, it's a game changer.
It's an environmental game changer.
It's a court game changer.
And guess what?
We are still going to be short of Scott Walker's 250,000 job pledge, even if all these jobs
come.
It's still short, which gets to the whole idea of the fact that there is one person
in this state so desperate to try and meet a campaign pledge from eight years ago that
is going to cost taxpayers $3 billion and we're going to feel the ramifications long
after he's out of office.
This is going to be a millstone around the state of Wisconsin.
Taxpayers 10 years from now are going to be so angry with us when we aren't seeing the
kind of jobs that we're promised and we're still giving Foxconn checks, cash, before
we pay for schools, before we pay for roads, before we pay for anything Foxconn gets money.
So in the end, is this a game changer?
Yeah, but it's not the kind of game changer you want.
It's a false hope that the governor's holding out over the state of Wisconsin just in time
for election.
That's all this is.
Wisconsin taxpayers deserve better.
The environment deserves better.
And for crying out loud, if you pass this amendment, the unlevel playing field you're
creating just in the business community alone is staggering.
You're stacking the deck for southeastern Wisconsin.
What does that say that the Fox Valley, the Chippewa Valley, up in central Wisconsin?
What does that mean?
It means I'm not setting up shop there.
I'm going to southeastern Wisconsin because I don't have to play by the same environmental
laws or the same court laws that I do know if I'm not in that zone.
Not my works.
The entire state's going to have to be his own in order for businesses to be able to
play on a level playing field, which in the end screws taxpayers and screws the environment.