silence into moments of action. >> As we sat down with Wisconsin
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos for an end of year interview. Senior
political reporter Zac Schultz started by asking him about the
Abundant Life shooting. >> Mr. Speaker, let's start with
the tragedy at Abundant Life. This week. Is there a
legislative response that you a bill?
>> Well, first of all, my sympathies. And what a
heartbreaking situation. It's just awful. And one of the
things that I always try to do in these situations is, first of
all, wait for all the facts. You know, I have news reports, I've
read things, but I don't know what's real and what's not. So
first of all, I think that in a lot of these cases, it's almost
impossible to think what could be done differently. You know,
me like far too often it's a troubled teen who perhaps was
bullied or had issues at school. And that's awful. We've done
some good things. We have the Office of School Safety, which I
support. We certainly made it harder to get into a school by
providing funding to harden the entrances. And then lastly, we
put more money into school based mental health. I think those are
good things. I can't imagine we would, you know, we certainly
wouldn't cut any of those programs. I think we maybe could
look at potentially increasing them, but just again, a tragedy,
and I want to wait for all the facts before we make any final
decisions regarding the office of School Safety.
>> In the last budget, the Department of Justice would have
that there wasn't the full amount that they requested to be
funded, especially for the tip line. And Governor Evers stepped
in with some federal Covid funding. Do you expect to fully
fund that? The tip line this time around?
>> I mean, I'm open to looking at all the details again, I
don't know. I mean, first of all, it has to work its way
through the process. I haven't seen all the budget submissions
yet. That has to go through. Governor Evers first. So I'm
certainly open to looking at it. I want to do things that are
going to make a difference. You know, I think the worst thing we
can do is try to politicize these things or make some kind
of an ideological lens. If there are things that really will make
a difference, of course, we're going to support those, but to
just say we did something and then have it either not work or
go in the wrong direction. I also want to be careful about
doing that too. you. You did lose some members,
but you maintained a majority. But is the new makeup of the
legislature. What does that mean for you? Going forward? Well, I
think the reality is close majorities mean usually less
happens. belief that somehow if it's
close, majorities, more is going to happen. I mean, look at the
Congress. The closer the majorities, whether it's
Democrats in charge or Republicans, it doesn't really
matter. It just makes it harder to get consensus. Now, the good
news for Assembly Republicans is that for 20 years, we've
operated on a consensus model where most of the time we argue
and debate and cajole until we get to a consensus, do the same
thing. I think there's a lot of that I'm excited to work on. If
there are some of those can be And I hope all of them can be.
But I also am not going to sacrifice our principles simply
because the election had a change.
>> Democrats seem to think that they're going to have more say
or more input. This session. It's coming up to your last
question. Your last answer to that. What what role do they
have to play as opposed traditionally, where it was that
they wanted to sign on? They could, but they really didn't
legislation. to be similar. I would say this,
that the freshmen who are coming in are clearly far left, right,
many of them ran in districts as unabashed liberals, which they
have every right to. Well, we're Senate right conservatives. So
if there are areas we can find common ground and consensus, we
are going to be all ears. But the idea that we're somehow
would have or done, a policy that we wouldn't have supported
before, absolutely not. You know, it's just not going to
happen. So I hope we can find consensus. We did last time. I
mean, with big, strong majorities, we did, you know,
shared revenue package. The Brewers deal alcohol literacy,
can do those again. >> What are you expecting from
budget proposal? budget different than we've done
before. What happened last time is, of course, Governor Evers
submitted it. We threw it out. We did our own budget. We put in
reductions in taxes and spending increases. We had the biggest
increase in a generation for schools, funding for, you know,
nursing homes, all kinds of good things. And the problem was he
took almost all the spending increases and vetoed almost all
the tax reductions. So the reason that we have the surplus,
more than half of it is literally the fact that tax cuts
got vetoed and that money is now sitting in Wisconsin's treasury.
We're not going to spend that on growing government. So what
we're going to do is we're going to pass our tax cuts first.
We're going to actually find out how much money we have left
over. And then that's what we're going to invest in. Government.
We're not going to do it in reverse where we spend on all
the things that he wants, and then we don't get the tax
reductions that Wisconsinites >> When, when do you expect to
have those negotiations with the governor on what what he will
sign as opposed to what he might veto? I mean, I'm happy to do it
at any time. >> I mean, as you know, during
December, we had a caucus last week. You know, we're still kind
of finding consensus. We have to elect our leadership. The
Democrats just had their caucus. So we're kind of finding our own
consensus. First, I feel pretty good about where Assembly
Republicans are now. We have to work with our Senate colleagues
to make sure that they're in a similar place. And then we'll
sit down with the governor in January. But I just want to be
really up front about it that, you know, we're going to have a
different budget process. We are not going to have it where we
spend a bunch of money, grow the spend a bunch of money, grow the