Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker and GOP leaders have launched a push to ram several years? worth of conservative agenda items through the Legislature this spring before recall elections threaten to end the party?s control of state government. Republicans, in a rapid sequence of votes over the next eight weeks, plan to legalize concealed weapons, deregulate the telephone industry, require voters to show photo identification at the polls, expand school vouchers and undo an early release for prisoners. At the same time lawmakers are pushing through conservative policies, they will be wrestling with Walker?s budget proposal. Walker wants to cut roughly $1 billion from schools and local governments, split the Madison campus from the University of Wisconsin System and slow the growth of Medicaid by $500 million.
Office of Strategic Communication