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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Minnesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
Hey, welcome back.
It is 7 0 6 now.
Welcome back up north on this Thursday morning, June 5th.
Nice to have you along here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
We will be talking to Congressman Mark Pokan a little bit later on this hour.
talking about the big bloated boondoggle of Donald Trump and House Republicans, some of whom are now expressing remorse, saying they didn't know exactly what was in the bill that they were voting for, which is what happens when you.
Don't actually want to follow the usual process of passing a bill the way we all learned on Schoolhouse Rock, which includes talking to one another, reading the bill, things like that.
So we'll talk to the good Congressman about that coming up in just a bit.
And then later on, we will talk to Chad Holmes from 98.9 WXCO to see what he's covering up in the Warsaw area.
Sean O'Malley will be here to talk about money and markets, especially the new, the newest Trump tariff out there.
Tariff Son Aluminum.
and on imported beer.
And of course, the aluminum goes into cans.
And so even if you're a domestic beer drinker, if you're a beer drinker, Donald Trump just jacked up your prices.
And it's going to do so much more damage to people who work in industries that rely on, you know, food and beverages than anything it might do for, you know, US Steel and aluminum production.
But that's what we're living in right now.
Let's see, we've got Brittany Merleau off today.
We hope to have her back tomorrow because she would be the first one to wish Rob from Tigerton a happy birthday.
So Parker Olson and I will have to do it instead.
Rob, happy birthday.
Happy birthday, Rob.
He says that in Tigerton.
It is sunny and 50 degrees.
He says today is my birthday and I've got lawns to mow today.
Yesterday I did four yards.
I mowed 12 lawns total and he said he also wanted to mention
that last night was the 49th anniversary of the greatest game in NBA finals history when the Boston Celtics defeated the Phoenix Suns 128 to 126 in triple overtime to take a 3-2 lead in the NBA finals.
And let's see, a few days later I always remember Guard heard from Phoenix hitting a buzzer beater at the end of the second overtime and he says thank you very much.
for the birthday wishes.
And look at that, Tony wishing a happy birthday to Rob on YouTube as well.
So we're just turning this into a one big Rob birthday party.
Yeah, he's a celebrity.
We got to celebrate.
I know, as it should be.
I suppose we could give people a chance to win some stuff.
What do you think?
That's a good idea.
I like winning stuff.
Okay, well, I'm all in favor of stuff as well.
So that takes us to the Scone Summer text to win contest done statewide across the network four times a day.
Each day or each one of these hourly contests four times during the day, you can win either $100 cash or a pair of brewers tickets, nice club level tickets.
And he said, and let's see, we got each entry.
put you in the drawing for one of the grand prizes, which includes a Wisconsin Dells getaway or a Door County getaway with some gas money to get you there.
Each time we do this, there's a different keyword that you need to text us through the Civic Media app before the end of the hour.
So if you don't have the app downloaded in the usual places, Apple, Google, go to one of the stations on the app.
Okay.
And then we give you the keyword and you text that puppy in and you are in the running.
four prize.
He said scrolling down to see what is today's prize.
Today's prize is a pair of brewer's tickets this hour.
If you text this keyword before the end of the hour.
Road.
R-O-A-D.
Text road.
through the Civic Media app to one of the stations on that app by the end of the hour.
You're in the running for a pair of Brewer's tickets.
And again, you will also be entered into the drawing for one of the grand prizes, a Wisconsin Dells area getaway or a Dora County getaway.
If you want to see the complete contest rules, head over to the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
And again, you will have new chances to play with new keywords at 11 a.m.
2 p.m.
and 4 p.m.
so there you go the Psconi summer text-to-win contest the keyword is road ROAD text that to us by the end of an hour and we could make you the winner of brewers tickets and maybe a big grand prize drawing as well so we will be talking to the congressman in just a sec here about
what's happening in DC with the big bloated boondoggle that President Trump is trying to pass.
And if you missed it last hour, we talked a bit about the developments closer to home where, again, Republicans are just trying to ram through whatever they want without having to actually negotiate.
But before I give you the update on what's happening in Madison, I want to say with great
happiness that the story I'm reading from here in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is from Jesse Oh point and it is
Just wonderful to see her name there again.
She'd been out with a health concern for quite some time and put up a post yesterday about being back and thanking people for expressing their concern.
And I have definitely missed her writing there and it's great to see her back writing for the journal Sentinel.
And it's where I again make that pitch to you that it's great to have free stuff.
All right, TV, local radio, up north news.
We've never had a paywall.
We never will have a paywall.
Other places that do have a paywall and are worth subscribing to,
you should subscribe to, and you should do that for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel if only for Jesse O'Poyne and Molly Beck and the rest of the politics team that writes articles.
So having said that and welcomed Jesse back, she's the one that wrote the article for them about how months of budget negotiations have fallen apart.
Republicans walked away from the negotiating table, and it was pretty easy to see this coming.
because, again, we've got Republicans both in DC and in Madison who are looking to get everything that they want and will do everything possible not to allow their enemy, as they see Democrats, to get any kind of a win.
If you'll recall in the last budget, Republicans wanted a great big tax cut for the highest brackets, and Governor Evers, of course, vetoed it.
And eventually he signed a budget with some partial vetoes that did include some tax cuts and he took some of the credit for it because that's what a governor gets to do.
You signed the bill or you send it back to the legislature.
Whether Republicans liked it or not, he's part of the process.
If he weren't part of the process, they would have written it in an entirely different way.
But that's so incensed Republicans.
Oh my.
goodness, they, I mean, for two years now, they have just been tangled up in knots of anger that Governor Evers would take any credit for, for a tax cut that's in there, even though he's actually been pushing for years for a better tax cut than anything they proposed, not bigger than what they proposed, but that's because again, theirs would have gone to the very rich.
The governors would have gone to the middle class.
So this time around, with a $4 billion surplus, I can say for emphasis,
A four billion dollar surplus.
Why does he always say that for emphasis?
Because as a legislator at the start of the Great Recession, we had to deal with a six billion dollar shortfall.
So I look at these guys with their four billion dollar surplus and they can't figure out a way to pass a budget in record time that makes everybody happy.
It is either hubris or laziness or arrogance to the hilt.
with these Senate and Assembly Republicans, and now they're walking away after months of negotiations, even after Governor Evers agreed too much of their tax cut plan.
Because you see, because of their anger about the governor taking credit last time around, they were demanding that they take care of the tax cut part first, before they take care of the spending side.
They wanted to make sure that their fingerprints were all over any kind of a tax cut.
Okay, the governor said, let's talk.
And they did.
And they, according to the governor, you know, did reach consensus.
He was willing to compromise on their tax cut plans.
Evers statement says the concept of compromise is simple.
Everyone gets something they want and no one gets everything they want.
He said he had agreed to support the Republicans half of the deal and their top tax priorities.
while Republicans could not reach consensus within their caucus to back Evers proposals.
In other words, there was no negotiation.
There was no compromise.
There was, well, okay, thanks for inviting us to talk.
We got what we wanted.
Now give us what we want.
We're not gonna take anything that you want, or at least come to any kind of a level that is remotely responsible, because keep in mind, let's just talk about schools for a second.
Public schools in Wisconsin have been underfunded compared to the rate of inflation for 16 consecutive years.
And so then you see reaction, like for example, the assembly majority leader, Tyler August, had put up a tweet, something like, oh, he was mocking the fact that schools and universities were needing at least a billion dollars in new money.
And again, he was mocking it with the hashtag, not gonna happen, hashtag tone deaf.
No, Representative Augs, tone deaf is underfunding public schools for 16 consecutive years to the rate of inflation.
So yeah, no wonder the need for proper state investment is so high.
And yet you didn't have to give the governor everything that he wants.
You didn't have to give schools everything that they want.
You didn't have to give parents who are desperate for affordable childcare everything they want.
You didn't have to give away everything on your position.
But the fact that with a four billion dollar surplus, you couldn't even come close to a win-win on investing in schools, on investing in childcare, on investing in healthcare, and continuing to make sure that
broadband internet connections expand throughout parts of Wisconsin, that you couldn't take care of getting PFAS out of our water, that you couldn't take care of our farmers who are looking for new markets at a time when their president is trying to put them out of business with his trade war.
There's no victory lap for you to take walking away from the negotiating table.
If you talked honestly to your constituents, honestly, they would say, compromise, reach agreement, find a win-win, stop wasting time.
But they don't do it that way.
And one of our listeners had a good way of putting this.
I've seen it all the time.
Here's Cassandra writing on YouTube.
I got a survey from Representative Dave Murphy, and the way he asked the questions was so partisan, so of course people are going to answer the way he expects or wants, and then he'll take it back and say, see, this is what the people actually think.
Yeah, there's something to be said for the surveys that lawmakers put out.
They're not surveys, all right?
They're PR pieces.
If you have a point of view of what you want your legislator to do, whether it's specific or general,
then reach out to them, go to their town hall if they have the guts to do a town hall, and tell them about the investments that they should make while keeping taxes affordable.
Again, how about cutting taxes for the middle class?
That would be a help.
But in walking away from the table, it only extends the process, and it extends the division, and it extends the negativity, and that's been the Republican legislator's playbook all along.
Thank you.
Little Sports at 719, the Brewers took two out of three from the Cincinnati Reds.
Isaac Collins belted the three-run homer for the Brewers.
Jackson Churio and Daz Cameron each hit two-run shots.
The Brewers have won now their 12th consecutive series against the Reds with a 9-1 victory.
They are now off today as they head home for a long homestand.
They will open up a weekend homestand against San Diego coverage beginning at 6.35 tomorrow on the Civic Media Radio Network.
We'll be right back.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.
Coming up next, Congressman Mark Boakhan and later Chad Holmes, Joseph Ecke and the latest Trump Sheriff news about beer and aluminum coming up from Sean O'Malley talking about your money and the markets.
From the text line, John and Oshkosh a little bit earlier, hearing Earl Ingerman.
Earl, spelled with a lot of letters, a lot of A's, R's and L's.
Earl, so good to hear you on the radio again, sir.
Yes, we have Earl on now every Wednesday morning at 8 0 6 and we played a little snippet back this morning at 6 30 as well So yes, Earl Ingram part of the civic media family.
You can hear him every week here That was Parker by the way bringing in a cast of children to You have to forgive Parker.
He's very excited right now.
I know
he's a he's a national champion if you missed it last hour
His UW Whitewater baseball team is the new D3 national champions of the world, perhaps the solar system.
I mean, they're that good.
With how well they hit home runs, they had 111 home runs in like 55 games.
They might as well be.
Is there a parade schedule?
I mean, Whitewater's had national champions before.
Do they do a parade?
Yeah, I think they're having a like coming home party.
I have like seven o'clock tonight and
white
water at their stadium.
Yeah.
So will we not see you?
Will you still be partying about that when we come on the air tomorrow morning?
I noticed you're not saying no right away.
No, I'm not.
I have thrown the idea out there that I should go.
Whether or not that happens.
All
right.
Well, stick around, folks, tomorrow morning at 6 0 6 and see if if a if a surly looking Luke matters is sitting in this chair instead.
We'll see how that works out for you.
All right.
Well, congratulations again.
I know how very exciting it is when anybody's favorite college team gets a national championship.
That is, that is a big deal.
Yes.
Thank you, sir.
So, all right.
I want to tell you about a new package of bills and we'll be talking more about this on Monday morning with Senator Chris Larson from Milwaukee and then on Thursday with Senate Democratic leader, Diane Hesselebein, because a few different packages of bills have been introduced
by lawmakers in both houses who are looking at the current state of things and saying we can do a little bit better.
One is about gun safety, we'll talk about that next week, but there's a new package of bills as well that is meant to address all of the things that President Donald Trump is trying to do in this country and the ways that it would negatively impact Wisconsin have lawmakers saying
There should be another way to do this and this too is a just you appoint article that I'm looking at in the journal Sentinel today and Before I before I read off what the bills would do Let me tell you a bit about what what I would do what fantasy Pat would do if I were say if I were governor to Donald Trump and the things that he wants to do here if He wanted to land say in Eau Claire and do a rally
because he's done rallies in the past, all right, and not paid the bill, didn't pay the law enforcement bill.
I would make sure that there are National Guard trucks or bulldozers on the runway in Eau Claire.
And I'd get on the radio and I'd say, sorry, sir, you have some overdue bills.
I'm standing by for you to wire them, wire the money.
And when you do, you can land the plane, but otherwise move on.
We don't want deadbeats here.
Similarly, there may have been maybe an arrest warrant issued as well for trying to overturn Wisconsin's election in 2020.
Again, a criminal activity, but he's managed to squeak out of these things.
So at least now we have Democratic legislators offering some bills that would undo some of these measures.
Senator Chris Larson said they're about protecting our neighbors from extreme overreach and broken promises from the federal government.
The first bill would allow the state to hold back payments to the federal government if the administration fails to provide funds that have been approved by Congress.
This gets to the crux of what Trump and Elon Musk are trying to do with cuts.
They're trying to cut money that has already been approved by Congress.
They're not allowed to do that.
And I don't know how else to put this.
They're not allowed to do that.
It is the law.
Congress allocates money in the previous budget or the current budget and has to be spent.
A president cannot claw it back.
And so this bill would again allow the state to hold back those payments that a president is trying to claw back.
A second bill would allow the state to place a lien on federal property within Wisconsin if the administration blocks congressionally approved funds from coming to the state.
And then the lien would be lifted when those federal funds are given to Wisconsin as they were supposed to be in the first place under the law.
The third bill would expand Wisconsin resident's ability to sue for violation of rights guaranteed by the U.S.
Constitution.
And the final bill would bar the state government from sharing personally identifiable information with the federal government unless necessary to comply with the law or carry out the administration of a government program.
In other words, not executive orders.
Executive orders are ways that a president directs a federal agency to do things, but Donald Trump is using these executive orders as if they are orders issued from his majesty.
And has gone so far as to alter the hiring process for federal employees to include a reference to carrying things out, you know, based on the wishes of the executive branch.
And that's not the way that this works.
And so these bills are essentially the bulldozers on the runway and saying, no, you're not going to claw back this money that has already been allocated to Wisconsin.
And you're not going to get personal information about Wisconsin residents unless it's something that complies with the law.
Not one of these executive orders that you're using to round up people, including innocent people and locking them up.
We're not going along with it now.
I will of course acknowledge it's not really likely that Republicans are gonna take up these bills and pass them on to Governor Evers and get them signed But we tell you about the bills anyway because you should know who's actually fighting for you Who's actually abiding by the Constitution?
Where is the real law and order here?
as opposed to you know the tyranny of despots who would be very happy using executive orders from the king
to do whatever the hell they want, whatever the consequences might be to innocent Americans everywhere.
Congressman Mark Polkhan is on the way, still to come as well.
Chad Holmes, Joseph Pekki, Sean O'Malley, all here on one of these mornings on a Thursday powered by Up North News.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Here's a reminder of this hour's keyword in the Eskani Summer Text-to-Win Contest.
The word is road, R-O-A-D.
Text the word road through the Civic Media app and you're in the running for brewers tickets.
Club level seats, they are great seats.
I've used these, you're gonna want these tickets.
But you're also in the drawing as well for the grand prizes, a lovely stay in Wisconsin Dells or in Door County.
Details at Civic Media's website, civicmedia.us.
That again, you have till the end of the hour to text road, and then you'll have more chances to win at 11 a.m., 2 p.m., and 4 p.m.
All right, we got a lot of ground to cover here with Congressman Mark Pocant, so let's just get right into that.
Congressman, how are you?
Hey, I'm doing
well, Pat.
Thanks
for having me.
You bet.
We're gonna have a lot to say about the Donald Trump's...
big bloated boondoggle in just a sec here, but you did recently visit the Dodge County Jail and I wanted to start by asking about that because President Trump has once again chosen to impose some kind of a travel ban, which seemed very serious in the first term.
in the second term, it almost seems more like a diversion from all the, you know, the heist that's going on in Washington DC.
But a lot of people are getting caught up in this anti-immigrant fervor, including undocumented immigrants who, you know, may or may not have committed any crimes.
But we don't know because they're not getting due process.
One of them was actually framed by somebody else who committed a crime.
And yet he, the victim, is still in the Dodge County Jail.
And what was that visit?
for what is also an ice detention facility?
Sure, well, and you're right, the best way to be a pickpocket is to divert someone's attention.
So Donald Trump, while they're picking our pockets to pay for a tax cut, tax break for Elon Musk and himself and anyone who could afford to go to Mar-a-Lago, you know, we're floating things like, you know, travel bans, et cetera.
You know, the reason we went and it's the only ice facility in Wisconsin that's at the Dodge County Jail to check it out is because one, it's
part of what we need to do for our oversight responsibilities as a member of Congress.
But also in New Jersey, they actually are charging a member of Congress who went and did that with some criminal laws.
So I think in solidarity, many of us were like saying, all right, ICE is just a rogue.
extra governmental organization right now because they don't talk to us and you know we try to reach out to them we took the number off the website for the Milwaukee office it's disconnected so you know we can't even get a hold of someone there and we did do a tour the county sheriff a republican a partisan republican but was very
fair.
I mean, he gave us a good tour.
You know, I think he did love that we were there.
But at the same time, he was he was exactly what he should do.
You know, he gave us a very polite, respectful tour.
We saw conditions, I think are
you know, what we've seen in all the reports, they're really good conditions.
And I think they run a good facility.
The real problem was no one from ISIS there, about every three weeks they show up other than to drop people off.
And there's really no way to ask the questions we needed to ask about who's there, why they're there, why they're there, what the due process rights, et cetera are.
And one of the people as a constituent of Gwen Moores, who, you know, that he was framed, but at the time they didn't know, he supposedly he did a threat, a letter threatening the President Trump.
But, you know, very quickly that story went south because the person is illiterate, both in English and Spanish.
And this was a very well-written, very beautiful handwriting letter.
Well, it turns out someone was trying to frame them to try to kick them out of the country.
And they're still holding the person despite that.
In fact, they supposed to have a hearing yesterday and Gwen told me they postponed it.
So she's going back Friday to talk to her constituent.
You know, it's not so much the facility that as you might expect in Wisconsin, we do things a little better probably than other places.
But it's certainly ice, you know, the fact that then the sheriff gave me his contact number price afterwards and I called and I've yet to get a call back and that was Monday, today's Thursday, just shows you how they think they are above the laws and agency.
Well, yeah, I mean, we're we're really veering into secret police territory, police state territory where people can be held behind bars without charges and that nobody nobody is accountable for this.
And again, all of it to distract from the big bloated boondoggle that House Republicans passed recently.
And it's over in the Senate right now.
And now we're we're hearing from some of your Republican colleagues, Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia being one of them saying they didn't know what was
in the bill before they voted for it.
The title of this hour's episode, by the way, is Why Can't Marjorie Read.
These are folks who loved playing this game when things like the Affordable Care Act was passing or any other big bills, but it turns out they're no different when they want to ram something through.
They'll apologize later for things that they didn't know were in it, but they voted for anyway.
Yeah, and
every
MAGA Twitter troll that has sent a message telling me I did the exact same thing with the Affordable Care Act, I wasn't in Congress then.
So, you know, just...
there's that you can keep it coming but I know reading is difficult so we won't go there uh no this is the problem you know they all the the committees did this overnight votes the rules committee met overnight we voted some people are up for a day and a half non-stop doing the bill and literally at the crack of dawn is when we voted on the bill after an all night session if you saw members we looked even worse than we do normally um you know to see how tired people were and and now they're saying oh we didn't know what's in the bill well
No, you know, of course you didn't know what's in the bill.
And another member from Nebraska said he didn't know about this court's provision was in the bill.
And, you know, now we're finding out a lot of people are trying to step away from aspects of the bill.
Well, I don't blame them.
I mean, there's a lot of bad stuff in that bill.
If I was Derek Van Orden or Brian Stile or others in Wisconsin, and I voted for a half a trillion dollar cut to Medicare, I voted to kick off 14 million people in the country from their health care, 11 million kids and others from food assistance.
I'd be as ashamed as you can imagine as well.
And then they won't do a town hall to talk about it.
Look, the Wisconsin smell test, the most simple thing in the world.
If you're proud of something, you brag about it.
You don't hide in your basement and hope no one calls.
And that's exactly what every Republican in Wisconsin is doing right now.
Well, without a doubt, and as people read it, even the world's richest man looks at this and calls it an abomination and looks at the amount that's being cut.
Now, I grant you, Elon Musk and Ron Johnson and others,
they're unhappy with it only because it would be better balanced if they would cut even more.
But at least they're making the point that way too much of this is going on the national credit card.
Again, for people who lived to talk about how much is going on the national credit card, it seems like they feel the taxpayer can afford anything as long as it's something they want on the national credit card.
In this case, tax cuts for the rich.
And now
they're trying to present a big lie to people that
no
one's going to lose benefits and that this won't add to the debt.
We had Russ
vote, the director of the OMB, the architect of Project 2025 in my subcommittee yesterday.
And he tried to say that again, like he did on the Sunday news shows.
And I said, well, the Cato Institute, a Republican-leading group disagrees with you.
Elon Musk disagrees with you.
Senator Hawley disagrees with you.
Senator Collins disagrees with you.
Senator Rand Paul, I'm sorry, disagrees with you.
Who else?
There are a whole bunch of the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan agency, the directors appointed by Republicans.
disagree with you.
I go, are you the only one that's right?
And he's like, yeah.
So, you know, they're just trying to put this lie out a few people like Derek Van Orden, probably fundamentally believe it.
But, you know, it takes reading a little bit, and you can very quickly see if you cut funds, that kind of drastic cut $700 billion from Medicaid, $300 billion from the Affordable Care Act, half a
trillion from Medicare, people are going to lose care.
And it's just common sense.
And, you know, unfortunately, the Republicans are just trying to ignore that they took this vote.
And this is going to hang on them well into next year.
And by the way, all the focus has been much of the focus has been on Medicaid, and to a lesser degree, snap and other things.
But Medicare is involved in this as well, indirectly, but still, folks who are seniors going, well, I'm on Medicare, I haven't heard them talk about that, so I guess I'm okay.
You might not be.
No, because of the pay go rules, and I won't go deep into the weeds, there's a trigger sequestration which is taking back the funds, and it will require a half a trillion dollar cut to Medicare.
They could have took care of it.
in their overnight sessions, but they just didn't want to pause for anything.
They just wanted to get this done so that Donald Trump had it by Memorial Day.
The problem is every Republican in Wisconsin in the House voted to cut a half a trillion dollars from Medicare and they didn't try to fix it along the way.
So I would love to know who they think in Wisconsin doesn't deserve the money they paid in all their life through their paychecks and their employers have paid in for Medicare and now it's going to be cut.
That is an unconscionable vote.
When we hear the talk about the deficits and the national debt and things like this and I'm not looking that this will all be solved by You know you and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and things like that But when you look at the graph of how much of that debt is there because of tax giveaways to the rich it does make people like me feel like well
What if we just took one of those basic wealth tax ideas that we often hear from the progressive side of the aisle?
And how much of these debt and deficit problems could we address if we actually right-sized our tax code once again?
When you look at the skew these bills offer for the wealthiest, I think one analysis I saw about 40%, the bottom 40% of people are going to pay more under this bill.
People on the top one-tenth of 1% do really, really well.
Top 1% really well.
Top 10% do well.
But you know, pretty soon real people don't get it.
And then they said, well, we did a tax on, I got rid of the tax on tips and on overtime and
on auto loan interest and a tax cut for seniors well those four that are for I call real people you know add up to five percent of the bill so 95 percent of the bill is pork going to Elon Musk and Donald Trump and you know the rest of us get a little bit and even then scratch the surface and that gold is fake that Donald Trump is putting on everything in the White House because for example the tax on tips
Third, people who are tip dirt wage earners don't even make enough to pay federal income taxes and up low and moderate wage workers tip workers are only 5% of them.
So you're ignoring the vast, vast majority of working folks.
And then when it comes to overtime, there's a bunch of categories where you can't qualify.
You're still gonna have to pay your FICA.
It's only on the overtime amount, not your regular pay amount.
You still gotta pay tax.
There's a whole bunch of asterisks is that, you know, like going and fit on a sheet of paper.
So a lot of these, oh, and they're also temporary.
I'm like,
corporate tax cuts for the tax cuts for the wealthy or permanent tax cuts for us.
are only gonna last for a few years.
So, you know, this bill is the worst bill I have seen in over 30 years of being in Congress and I can't wait to talk about it everywhere I can.
You've been in the Congress, you've been in the legislature.
We talked in the last segment about the Republicans in the legislature walking away from the negotiating table with Governor Evers and Republicans in Congress trying to ram this through in one bill because otherwise they have to follow a regular order which could subject it to the filibuster
and everything else, and yet Elon Musk and some others are now saying, you know, kill the bill.
But that would mean probably going through regular order, and I know I hesitate to ask anybody to make predictions, but your thoughts anyway on whether this bill does find some way to get modified, sent through the Senate, and approved again by the House, or are we actually facing the prospect of, like the previous couple of years, we get to October 1st and there's still no federal
budget?
That's a separate, somewhat of a separate issue from this.
But yes, to that question, I'm on our probes and we don't even have all the numbers and they're asking us to start marking things up, which is ridiculous.
I think the Senate originally only had 2% of the cuts of the House.
So there's that big difference between the two bills.
Look, I wake up to bad choices and worse choices every single day.
I'm all for bad choices.
To me, a bad choice is stop the cuts to healthcare and food assistance and education funding from people.
I think they're gonna get their tax cut bill no matter what, there's unity on that.
How they pay for it, it might just go on the national debt like the last time, which is not a good answer, but I don't wanna hurt people right now.
out of three kids in Wisconsin who gets their health insurance from Medicaid, 55% of our seniors and nursing homes.
I mean, those aren't the people that should have to pay for Elon Musk to be able to put more rockets in the air.
Well, like I've said, if it ends up just all going on the national credit card, they're just going to try to once again divert people in next year's election campaigns with all kinds of other mud slinging and try to get people to forget all about their pockets being picked.
Congressman Mark Polkana is always we appreciate the update.
Thanks for what you're doing.
We'll talk again real soon.
Yeah, thank you so much for having
me.
You bet.
Take care.
Safe travels to you.
Pause here and then we'll have more coming up all across the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Krightlow live from Lake Wissoda.
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you can read my story that was posted just yesterday that says everything Wisconsin needs to know about Trump's cuts to Medicaid and Badger Care.
Essentially, it's a Medicaid 101 story.
If you've been hearing all about Medicaid and you just heard Congressman Pokan talking about Medicare, and if you're still not clear on the differences between them,
and really want to know, well, how does BadgerCare fit into this and what is it that would be cut and who all is on Medicaid in Wisconsin and so forth and so on.
Go to the website, upnorthnewswi.com and just have it right there at your fingertips in one page.
I will tell you that the story ends with talking about how Medicaid next month is going to mark its 60th anniversary.
60 years of improving the lives of tens of millions of American children, giving workers the stability to stay in the workforce because they have healthcare coverage, saving taxpayers from the cost of uncompensated healthcare, and more sick days, and lives lost to preventable illnesses, Medicaid has offset all of those things.
And yet, not every member of Congress appreciates that.
For example, there's Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst, who when confronted with the knowledge that cutting Medicaid would lead to some premature deaths, Joni Ernst said bluntly, well, we're all gonna die.
To which Parker is looking online and noticing that Reagan, the t-shirt company out of Iowa,
which always comes up with hilarious t-shirts, has a new one out.
I didn't have time to put it up on screen here, but it's got the sun over like a kind of a cornfield and it just says, Iowa, we are all going to die.
Hey, yeah, it's so, hey, taxes and death, right?
Yeah.
So I mean, why, why take care of people, you know, why do that?
So, so there you go.
So read, read all about that over on our website, up North News W I dot com.
Back to the discussion of Republicans walking away from the negotiating table with Governor Tony Evers on the state budget by the way It leads to our Sunday morning newsletter and our question of the week which now takes on greater relevance given yesterday's events Because Republicans are now going to write a budget bill on their own They're not going to make a deal with Governor Evers.
They're gonna send him something and dare him to veto it
And there are more groups than ever that are now saying, you know what?
Yeah, veto it.
Don't try to fix it with partial vetoes, with line item vetoes.
Just veto the whole darn thing and send it back and make them start over.
Now that carries risks, as we've discussed previously, because Republicans could say, fine, we won't pass a budget at all.
And then everything just continues along at the levels of the current budget.
State governments don't shut down.
And so nothing would get worse, but nothing would get better either.
Now, Republicans could take that into the 2026 campaign and say, look, the governor wouldn't work with us.
I think it's far more likely, since the one thing a legislature has to pass every time is a state budget, I think it's far more likely that people would look at them and say, you couldn't get the job done.
You had one job.
pass a state budget and you decided to take your marbles and go home.
And I don't know that voters will necessarily take kindly to that.
But what do you think?
Do you think that Governor Evers should get the veto pen out when he gets the bill from Republicans and either try to line item veto it and fix it where he can?
Or should he just veto the whole thing and say, look, you wouldn't work with me?
I don't like this at all.
Why don't you guys try again?
Or why don't you guys come back to the negotiating table?
So what do you think?
Fix it with partial vetoes or veto the whole thing?
And again, I understand it hasn't been passed yet, but where are you right now based on what you think Republicans will send to the governor?
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There's a lot still to come here.
We obviously had a lot to talk about with Congressman Pocan.
One of the things we didn't get to talk about, however, was the latest chapter in
President Trump's trade war with our own allies and trading partners and the latest one is gonna hit everybody who drinks beer or consumes other beverages or eats food because that aluminum tariff is really gonna do something to canned goods and There's also an import a new tariff on imported beer.
So beer drinkers giddy up
This is what your president is doing.
We'll talk about all that with Sean O'Malley in our next hour, along with Chad Holmes and Joseph Peckie and the updated forecast as well.
This is all here on our mornings powered by Apple Earth News on the Civic Media Radio Network.
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