Hello, I’m Senator John Lehman and I am proud to give this week’s Democratic Radio Address. Senate Democrats have been hard at work in committee preparing for next session and finding answers about this session’s major legislative changes.

Often times during election years, the legislature shuts down and senators and representatives go back to their districts to work on reelection. But, this year has been different – since July when Senate Democrats took control of the Senate, we got right to work. 

Instead of waiting it out until next session, Senate Democrats went right to work by looking at how the education cuts hurt and what could be done to fix our school funding formula. Under Senator Tim Cullen’s leadership, we changed the tone of the mining discussion by doing our homework instead of trying to slam a bill through the senate. And because Wisconsin is still dead last in job creation, we looked into our current skills gap and what we can do to get people back to work. 

In recent years we’ve seen hyper partisanship on both sides, but committee work has traditionally been a better opportunity for legislators to work in a bipartisan fashion. Wisconsin can certainly use more cooperation between the parties. This fall’s committee work did just that – we worked to find common ground on issues that are important to all Wisconsin citizens.