Gubernatorial candidate Walker visits Beaver Dam (Beaver Dam Daily Citizen)

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By AARON MARTIN

Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker covered a wide-range of topics Tuesday evening speaking with about 50 people who attended a meet-and-greet event at the Veteran’s Center in Beaver Dam.

The Milwaukee County executive who will face former State Rep. Mark Neumann in the GOP primary spoke and answered questions for about an hour at the event hosted by the Republican Party of Dodge County and the Beaver Dam Chamber of Commerce.

In opening Walker said much of his personal and political philosophy is derived from his grandmother, who weathered the Great Depression and never spent beyond her means. To that end, Walker said he packs his lunch in a brown paper bag every day to save money. That cost-saving measure has led him to coin the term “brown paper bag common sense,” which is comprised of three tenets. First, don’t spend more than you have. Second, smaller government is better government. Third, people create jobs, not government.

Walker said many people he talks to around the state are scared of the economy and scared of losing jobs.

“I’m here to tell you that come Nov. 2 of this year you don’t have to be scared anymore because there is help on the way,” he said. “We’ve been through this before and with the right approach we can get out of it again.”

He said he has a six-point plan to “get government out of the way of business so that business can lower its cost and put more people to work.”

The plan calls for state government to reduce the taxes, reducing regulations, reducing the litigation burden, offering children a world-class education, and building strong power and transportation infrastructure systems.

“When I think about transportation infrastructure I think about a system that allows us to reinvest in our roads and bridges that are crumbling all across the state,” Walker said, adding he did not support investing $810 million on a high-speed rail between Milwaukee and Madison was the right answer.

Walker also defended his controversial claim that his policies could create 250,000 jobs in his first term as governor by referencing his tenure as Milwaukee County executive. He said he was elected as a fiscal conservative three times, reduced debt by 28 percent without raising property taxes and eliminated waiting lists for elderly patients seeking long-term care by signing on to Family Care — all while naysayers said he couldn’t do those things.

When Walker took questions from the audience, one man asked him what kind of campaign he would engineer to draw businesses to the state.

“We should start first and foremost with our current employers,” he said, which would promote growth. “Then we have to make fundamental changes to lower the cost of business.”

A correctional officer in the room asked if he would privatize the state’s prison system, to which he said unequivocally “No.”

When asked about the constitutionality of healthcare reform Walker said he couldn’t find anywhere in the constitution where it gave the government the right to impose coverage mandates on citizens.

http://www.wiscnews.com/bdc/news/local/article_dd1e581a-4200-11df-a9ae-0...