In case you haven’t heard, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker has embarked on a motorcycle tour to promote his gubernatorial campaign “promote Milwaukee County,” and today’s leg of Walker’s tour will take him through Ladysmith, Phillips, Arbor Vitae, Rhinelander, Antigo, and Wausau. It’s been widely documented that Walker was opposed to federal stimulus funds (before he turned around and asked the feds for some stimulus bucks), so I as a part of Walker’s “Rolling Blunder” tour, I thought I’d take a moment to highlight some of the ways stimulus funds have been used to the benefit of the locations Walker will be visiting today.
- LADYSMITH: $11,018 to the School District of Ladysmith to help make available special education and related services for children with disabilities age 3 through 5 years. Additionally, the City of Ladysmith will receive $1,260,000 for expansions of the City of Ladysmith’s Meadowbrook Center and Fritz Avenue manufacturing facilities by providing for addition of 34,500 sq. ft. of leaseable manufacturing space, which is expected to result in 136 new jobs.
- PHILLIPS: Just over $200,000 to the Phillips School District to assist that district in providing special education and related services to children with disabilities in accordance with Part B of the IDEA.
- ARBOR VITAE: $8,280 to the Arbor Vitae-Woodruff Joint School District to make available special education and related services for children with disabilities age 3 through 5 years.
- RHINELANDER: $15,630,077 to the City of Rhinelander for financing the construction of wastewater treatment facilities.
- ANTIGO: $632,213 to the Unified School District of Antigo to assist that district in providing special education and related services to children with disabilities in accordance with Part B of the IDEA.
- WAUSAU: Just over $6.5 million to the Wausau School District for assistance for elementary and secondary education and public institutions of higher education, and for modernization, renovation, or repair of public school facilities and institutions of higher education facilities, including modernization, renovation, and repairs that are consistent with a recognized green building rating.
- Just over $127,000 to Marathon County to assist it in ensuring citizens are up to date with their required vaccinations.
It’s too bad Scott Walker won’t be visiting any of these sites to tell them why he thinks they didn’t deserve to get federal stimulus funds to help create jobs, provide for more special education services for children, and build new wastewater treatment facilities.
To read more about Scott Walker’s “Rolling Blunder” tour, check out Pretty Important Politics and Eye on Wisconsin.
Well done. I’d love to get an answer from Slippery Scott.
Don’t hold your breath.
Yep all that “stimulus” money was absolutely free. The $13 Trillion federal debt is not a concern, much less the $108+ Trillion in unfunded liabilities. We can print our way out of depressions, and there are no long term effects of our profligacy, waste, fraud, and corruption we indulge in today.
Personally, I used to be of the opinion that if we can not afford to fund local projects and services locally, we can not afford them. Thanx for enlightening me.
The stimulus was more to keep the economy from tanking than anything.
I never said the stimulus money was free.
No, you just set up a false premise that if one was against massive government deficit spending then one must think local communities didn’t deserve funds for important things. We’d all love to give our little girl a shiny new pony, but it’s just not in the checkbook.
Didn’t liberals spend 8 years denouncing the “you’re either with us or you’re against us” rhetoric?
What would have happened without the stimulus is my question…maybe everything would be the same. Or maybe the entire economy as we know it would be gone. A solid chunk of economists thought massive government spending was the only way out. What was the alternative? If the President at the time was a Republican, what would have been done? The economy took a dive during a transition, none of us know what would have happened. If it was a Republican in the executive office, we might be throwing the fit right now. This is all so theoretical, I know I can’t give any answers. But I know I’d hate to gamble on the entire economy crashing.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the concept of a stimulus package, but that this one focused so heavily on government spending, government jobs, and programs. Great, that propped up state and local governments for a year or two. But what about more stimulus for the private sector, incentives for small business, etc. They had the right idea with one small segment in the “cash for clunkers” — but it was government offering vouchers to buy new cars. How about that same concept but doing something like suspending payroll taxes for a while. Then people could have decided with their checkbooks what areas of the economy to stimulate.