The House is on Fire and Republicans Argue About Process

MADISON – Today, the Wisconsin State Senate will take up another amended version of Assembly Bill 1. The new version before the Senate today came after Assembly Republicans ignored the compromise bill passed by the Senate on January 12th.

Senator Agard (D-Madison) released this statement:

“We are in the middle of a pandemic, but the actions legislative Republicans are taking do not reflect our current reality. They are legislating as though we do not have thousands of active cases of COVID and nearly 6,000 empty seats at dinner tables. Today, Senate Republicans are going to go back on the compromise they made with Governor Evers, choosing instead to play politics with the state’s COVID response.

“The fact is there is so much that we agree on. We want schools to open safely, we want businesses to recover, we want to go to sporting events, we want to gather with friends and family, we want to live our lives.

“We all want these things back – but we need to work together and do the difficult but necessary things to move forward and get to that point. We need to wear masks and practice social distancing. We need to get through these last few challenging months as we work to get vaccines to people across Wisconsin.

“Republicans arguing about the governor issuing the public health emergency are missing the point entirely. Our main goal is not who is solving the problems in front of us, but that we are actually solving the problems in front of us. When the house is on fire, you shouldn’t care who puts it out. What matters is we put out the fire. Our state is still suffering from the effects of this pandemic and our legislature has done very little to provide any support.

“Republican leaders have completely lost sight of our objective. Our objective is to get life back to normal, to restart our economy, and to allow our kids to return to school – not continue these political theatrics that are so trivial compared to the problems our friends and neighbors are facing. Wisconsinites deserve better.”