Politics & Government

Gov. Walker: State of Our State

Gov. Scott Walker delivers his weekly radio address.

The state has partnered with the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association to produce and distribute brief radio address once a week.  Audio files and a written transcript of this radio address can be accessed online. To download an mp3 file you can visit Walker's website, right click the radio address link and click “save link as.”

Here is the transcript from this Thursday’s radio address, which is titled State of Our State.

Hi, this is Scott Walker.

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On Wednesday, I reported on the State of our State. 

We looked back to last January and remembered that during the three years before I took office, Wisconsin lost 150,000 private-sector jobs. The unemployment rate a year ago was 7.5 percent.  And after years of tax increases and budget tricks, Wisconsin faced one of the largest budget deficits in the country.

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 Now, our unemployment rate is down from a year ago.  In fact, it's the lowest it’s been since 2008.

During the past year, we added thousands of new jobs.  And we balanced the state budget.  In fact, we balanced it -- without raising taxes; without massive layoffs; and without budget tricks; all of which allowed us to put more than $1.2 billion of new state money into Medicaid programs like Badgercare and FamilyCare.

Not only did we invest in important programs, but we also protected the taxpayers.   Property taxes across the state are the best they’ve been in 15 years, and the K-12 property tax rates are down for the first time in years. 

 In my State of the State address we laid out plans to help the people of Wisconsin create more jobs, to keep our budget balanced and to insure that every kid in the state has access to a great education.  A year from now, I hope that I can report on how these plans helped improve the lives of all of our citizens in this great state. 

Working together, we can move Wisconsin forward.


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