Here & Now

Assembly Majority Leader Lays Out COVID-19 Relief Package

Frederica Freyberg:

Despite objections from the governor and Democrats, this week Republican leadership forged ahead with voting on election day. They found support in their efforts from the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. Tonight, Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke joins us with his insights on the COVID-19 pandemic, including new proposed legislation responding to the outbreak. Representative Steineke, thank you so much for being here.

Jim Steineke:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Former longtime Assembly Republican and current Neenah mayor Dean Kaufert told us this week that he believes Tuesday’s vote did suppress the vote because some people or potentially many people were afraid to stand in line. What’s your reaction to that?

Jim Steineke:

Well, I think the biggest thing is we kept the current election procedures in place. Whether everybody was able to go through the absentee ballot process or had to appear in person, that’s our regular process. The governor agreed with us for three weeks leading up to the election. Only in the 11th hour did he change his mind when really, it was too late. We had already had hundreds of thousands of ballots cast, hundreds of thousands more out there. To change the rules in the middle of the game just didn’t make sense at that point. Again, we had 3900 locally elected officials, local races that were on the ballot that needed to be filled.

Frederica Freyberg:

But you’re not suggesting that had the governor made the decision to delay the in-person voting earlier, that the majority would have gone along with that?

Jim Steineke:

No. What I’m saying is the governor was right early on when he said we could not delay it because it was a general election. Other states that delayed their elections all had primaries. If we had only had a primary in place, primary election, we could have delayed it. But being that it was a general election for over 3900 local seats in the state, we just didn’t have that option.

Frederica Freyberg:

What is your reaction to missing absentee ballots that are being reported now, some potentially from your district?

Jim Steineke:

Yeah. It’s really troubling. I really believe that if somebody requests an absentee ballot within the time frame given, they should be guaranteed to get that ballot back in time to vote in the regular election. Now, this flies in the face of what the Democrats are proposing right now. They’re proposing going to an all-mail-in ballot election with no in-person voting when we’re seeing all the problems we had with the USPS. I think it’s a system that doesn’t make sense right now. The one we currently have in place we saw work by and large to get people out there to vote through the absentee process. But we do have to tighten it up to make sure that everyone that requests one in time gets one in time.

Frederica Freyberg:

What if issues persist into November? I mean, is the majority willing to accept trying to fix whatever issues exist with the absentee ballots?

Jim Steineke:

Yeah. I mean, I think we need to do, working with the elections commission, whatever we can to make sure that the current process works for everybody. What the Democrats are really proposing — and it’s no secret that they tend to use crisis to move policy. They’ve been trying to get rid of voter ID for years, ever since it went into place. They’re trying to use this crisis in order to do that. They’re proposing sending out ballots to every single registered voter, but then eliminating the voter ID requirement and the signature of a witness on that ballot. So there would be absolutely no protections in place to make sure that the voter sending in that ballot is who they say they are.

Frederica Freyberg:

Meanwhile, legislative Republicans have come up with a COVID-19 response package. What are its most important prongs?

Jim Steineke:

Really what we’re trying to do here — and we’re working with leadership on the Democrat side to put together a package that’s bipartisan in nature. What we’re trying to do is make some changes to the unemployment package to suspend the one-week delay so we can capture some federal money through the CARES Act. We have to make some Medicaid changes to capture additional money through the federal government. Then we’re also trying to streamline some regulations to ensure we can get as many health care workers into the field as we can right now to respond to that crisis.

Frederica Freyberg:

Part of the language of that package, I understand, would be to allow the Joint Finance Committee to make state spending cuts because of potential loss of revenue. The governor, as you know, takes great exception to that. What do you say to him on this?

Jim Steineke:

Well, we’ve removed that because of his objections. I mean one of the things that’s frustrating for us is we’ve been working with our colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle to put forward a package that we can all agree on. The package that the governor ran out to the media and released was just an initial draft, something that we were getting input from the Democrats on, trying to find out where we can find some common ground. And instead of coming to us and letting us know that he had objections to it, the governor decided to go straight to the media, which I’m not really sure why he did and it doesn’t really help our negotiations but we’re going to continue to move forward with the Democrats to try to find a package we can all vote on and send to the governor’s desk.

Frederica Freyberg:

But, again, that provision having to do with the Joint Finance Committee has been removed from the package?

Jim Steineke:

Yes. I mean the idea here — and I think there’s universal agreement here that we’re going to see revenue decline coming into state coffers, right. So we had an $800 million projected surplus going into next year before this whole crisis started. That’s gone. And then we’re worried that the new revenue projections will show a shortfall. So what we’re trying to do is slow down the rate of spending in the second year so that we don’t have to make massive cuts going into the next budget.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Well, Representative Jim Steineke, we truly appreciate you joining us and good luck to you, the legislature and the executive branch as you work through this COVID-19 response package.

Jim Steineke:

Thank you. Stay safe, everybody.