A look ahead to the coming state capitol session
through the eyes of our "Here and Now" political panelists,
Bill McCoshen, Republican consultant and managing partner
of Capitol Consultants and Scot Ross, Democratic activist and
executive director of One Wisconsin Now.
Thanks to both of you for being here.
- Thanks for having us. Happy New Year.
- Happy New Year.
- Obviously at the legislative level here in the state of
Wisconsin transportation funding is the big issue.
First to you, Bill.
What do you think the likely outcome is concerning raising
the gas tax or registration fees?
Will the governor relent there
if other taxes are cut elsewhere?
- I'm an optimist.
I'm hoping the governor will actually solve this problem as
part of his budget when he introduces it in a month.
What he has said publicly time and time again is he won't raise
the gas tax or registration fee unless there's an offset.
He's got the perfect opportunity to do that in his own budget in
the next month.
If that doesn't happen, I'm confident the legislature is
going to be looking for a long-term solution.
- Where do you think those offsets will come?
- It's hard to tell. I think there's--
State income taxes could potentially be decreased.
That could be an offset.
There could be loopholes that are eliminated
that could be an offset.
Just about anything's got to be on
the table at this point in time.
Speaker Robin Vos and Co-Finance Chair John Nygren
have said that their house
certainly wants to do something on this.
I think Majority Leader Fitzgerald has been open to it as well.
- Scot, what do you think of the split between Robin Vos and
Scott Walker on this issue?
- I think after six years of Republican control this is where
the rubber literally is meeting the road and we are seeing that
we cannot pay for the things that we need to pay because
Governor Walker governs by talking point.
He's busted the budget.
We wanted to be out there saying how much he's cut in taxes and
we can't provide the basic services like roads for rural
and urban Wisconsin that we've been able to rely on in a
bipartisan way for decades.
- What do you think of the offset that we're talking about?
- When I look at the budget, I see things like the
manufacturing and ag tax credit which is
a $160 million to millionaires.
So we can't pay for our roads because of those.
Creating more and more tax loopholes that will go
predominantly to rich people and corporations I don't think is
the way to solve Wisconsin's long-term transportation
problem.
Governor Walker campaigned in 2005 saying we need to get rid
of the gas tax indexing.
He got what he wanted.
Now we're in this pickle.
- The repeal of indexing is part of the problem.
No question about that.
That's taken a billion dollars out of the system over the
course of the last 10 years.
And frankly, that's how much we're short,
about a billion dollars.
So had that not happened, we may not be in this predicament.
But I'm confident--you got to give Governor Walker credit.
He did replace or restore all the funding Governor Doyle had
taken out of the transportation fund during his two terms as
governor.
Governor Walker does deserve credit for that.
Those were the two problems, the raids on the fund and the repeal
of the indexing.
And they've all culminated this year.
- Let's move to Washington and the lightning speed with which
the GOP seems to want to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
How wary do you each think that even Republicans are about this
problem of you break it, you fix it?
- I think for six years they've been saying they want to get rid
of Obamacare and now they don't have a plan.
They're talking about bits and pieces.
And I guess like the number one thing now is they want to repeal
funding for Planned Parenthood.
Paul Ryan has had ten terms in Congress.
His entire family has had their health care paid for, his kids
for ten terms.
Now he's going to go back and say, "Hey 20 million people
you're going to lose your health care coverage." I mean there was
just a report out today that said tens of thousands of jobs
would be lost in Wisconsin if they just summarily repeal
Obamacare.
- It's pretty clear that there isn't agreement on this yet
between the White House, the Senate and the Congress, but I
think there will be in relatively short order.
It will be one of the first things that they tackle.
Mike Pence, incoming vice president-elect, was on the hill
yesterday and said that was going
to be one of their first items.
I don't have any doubt that they'll get there
but I don't think they have the final answer yet.
- Well, the replace will be a difficult move.
- Yeah.
I don't think it will happen before the 2018 elections.
I think there will be a fairly lengthy off-ramp here for
Republicans so they don't own this come 2018 elections.
- On Russia, Vladimir Putin, how willing do you think the
American public is to make him our friend now?
- I don't think they know enough about it.
I mean they hear from Trump that he might not be the worst guy in
the world.
They hear from Tom Cotton or John McCain that he's a very bad
guy.
I think it's too early to tell and it remains to be seen how
that's going to play itself out.
- I think the American people deserve real answers about what
is in Donald Trump's taxes that we would be cozying up to
somebody who has done so many bad things like Vladimir Putin
has.
This is about America, not about Donald Trump's finances.
- We need to leave it there. Scot Ross, Bill McCoshen.
Thanks a lot. - Thank you.