LiveBlog HQ: Fact Checking Walker-Neumann debate
12:00 – We’re all ready to go here at the OWN office. Waiting with anticipation to see if Scott Walker and Mark Neumann just come right out and say they support the single largest contributor to our nation’s debt, the Bush Tax Cuts.
12:09 – Walker is sour grapes that his campaign donor Super Steel chairman Fred Luber didn’t get the Talgo rail deal. Says he doesn’t support train deal, but expressed outrage his donor didn’t get contract.
12:14 – Milwaukee Co. taxpayers have seen a 20% property tax increase. Hs spending increases eclipsed Doyles. Numbers don’t lie.
12:15 – Even though Wisconsin already faces a $2.3 billion dollar budget deficit, Walker wants to give $2 billion in tax cuts to big corporations and WI’s wealthiest people. To pay for his plan, Walker would have to make massive cuts to education, health care, and public safety, which would mean firing thousands of teachers and police officers and ending health coverage for thousands of Wisconsin children.
12:20 – Walker mentions his time in the legislature, does not mention he voted for $200 billion in budget spending.
12:23 – Walker appears interested in investment in infrastructure.
12:24 – Again the unrealistic promise by both candidates to essentially eliminate unemployment in the state.
12:27 – Does Neumann’s successful business plan include businesses not paying all their taxes?
12:31 – We thought for sure Walker’s criteria for the selection judicial appointments was going include whether or not they contribute to his campaign.
12:36 – Walker wants to repeal the recent health insurance reform, which would mean that insurance companies would be allowed to kick people off their insurance when they get sick or if they have a pre-existing condition; prescription drug prices would increase for seniors, and small businesses that provide health insurance to employees would face a tax increase.
12:41 – Highly publicized Walker flip-flop on immigration.
(Is Walker wearing his flip flops today?)
—Commerical break. Still no explanation how they’re going to pay for billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest and big corporations.
12:46 – Walker and Neumann’s plan to improve education: tax cuts to the wealthiest and big corporations paid for by cutting education, potentially resulting in thousands of teachers fired.
12:51 – Neumann failed to note that his private schools take public funding.
12:52 – Walker borrowing ideas from a Bush. What’s new?
12:57 – I just have to say, Scott Walker is a career politician who’s raised taxes and raised spending.
12:58 – Again, Walker, a career politican just called himself a CEO. I wonder what businessman Mark Neumann is thinking.
1:00 – It’s 1pm, the debate is over, and still Scott Walker and Mark Neumann have notgiven us the slightest clue as to how they will pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest and big corporations.
Be sure to check out our old blogs for more on Mark Neumann’s and Scott Walker’s unwillingness to detail what cuts to to vital public services like education and law enforcement they will make in order to give tax cuts to the rich and re-open tax loopholes for big business.