Economic Summit II - Remarks and Speeches

Wisconsin's Economy at the Crossroads:
Building Higher Paying Jobs for the Future

November 26-27, 2001
Midwest Express Center, Milwaukee

Reestablishing a Consensus for Growth
Assembly Speaker Scott R. Jensen
November 27, 2001

Accompanying paper available here

Last year when I spoke at this economic summit, I came with a to-do list for Wisconsin's economy. There were a lot of to-do lists at that first economic summit, and some of the things that were mentioned have gotten done and some of them have not. This year, a lot of smart people at this summit have given us even more to-do lists for Wisconsin's economy. But upon reflection, it seems to me that what's missing from Wisconsin's economy isn't that we don't have enough to-do lists. What is missing is an overwhelming, bi-partisan, public consensus for growth.

We have plenty of to-do lists, but we don't have this consensus for growth any longer in this state. We had it coming out of the economic crisis of the 1980s. Democrats, Republicans, university leaders, community leaders, the media, everyone was committed and dedicated to helping this state create jobs and create economic growth. Now, fourteen years later, we have become complacent after more than a decade of economic prosperity.

Just take a step back now and think back to the early 1980s, and think about the position that Wisconsin was in. In the early part of the 1980s, this state was in a serious economic crisis. We had a double dip recession. One of the longest recessions in the nation was in this state. We had extraordinarily high unemployment. We lost thousands and thousands of manufacturing jobs that never returned. People and businesses who had been in this state all of their lives left, never to return. Business executives spent their own money to put ads in the Wall Street Journal to warn other businesses not to come here. And perhaps the ultimate insult was the billboard at the state border between Wisconsin and Illinois which said. "Will the last business to leave Wisconsin please turn out the lights." In fact things had gotten so bad and the crisis was so well understood that when the public was asked to name the number one issue in the state in 1985, people said, "The business climate." Now that's not something that normally trips off the tongues of housewives who get phone calls from pollsters. The normal answer is healthcare, or taxes, or education or crime. But, in 1985, people said "the business climate," and in that atmosphere was forged a bi-partisan public consensus for growth.

Tommy Thompson caught that wave and rode it into the Executive Residence. He worked with a bi-partisan coalition in the legislature to cut taxes, reduce regulation, to produce new partnerships between the public and private sectors, and to put jobs at the top of the public agenda. And it paid off.

Income for Wisconsin families went from below the national average to above the national average.

The state went from losing tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs to being one of only two states in the nation that had increases in manufacturing jobs in the late 80s and early 90s.

Wisconsin became one of the five hottest labor markets in the entire country.

We had fourteen years of unemployment rates below the national average.

We were consistently one of the five or six lowest states in the nation in unemployment rates.

We went from a position where our biggest challenge was a job shortage to where our biggest challenge just a year or two ago was a worker shortage.

Unfortunately, after fourteen years of this unprecedented prosperity we have become extraordinarily complacent and we have taken economic growth and jobs for granted. And we have lost that commitment and that consensus we had.

At the state and local level we see it all the time in opposition to economic growth. People come out to oppose new or expanded roads. They oppose new commercial development and new industries. They say certain types of businesses aren't right for their community, and say no to those businesses at both the state and the local level.

They oppose new power generation and new transmission at a time when the state is clearly in dire straits with regard to energy production. Every single power plant, transmission line, and pipeline in the state of Wisconsin has local opposition, and yet everyone wonders where we are going to get the power we need to power the state's economy for the next twenty years. Even windmills are getting opposition. Forty miles north of here the community is in an uproar over the notion that people want to put more windmills along the freeway to produce power in the suburbs.

The bi-partisan coalition we had in Madison for economic growth has also fallen apart. I've served ten years in the legislature come January and looking through the bills that have been proposed, and the ideas that were included as part of the state budget, I think this is the most anti-business session of the legislature in my tenure here.

In the Senate, the Democrats proposed over $300 million in new business taxes at a time when the state thought it had a billion dollar surplus. Now that we think we may have a billion dollar shortfall, two Democrat state Senators have come forward to say that the answer is to increase business and corporate taxes in Wisconsin by 10%, which would raise $600 million in taxes.

At the last economic summit, the one item that everyone could agree upon was that we needed to encourage Midwest Express and other airlines to expand in this state. It took us three years and five tries to get that through the legislature and on the governor's desk.

We are no longer as committed to jobs and growth in this state as we were in the 1980s. And many of us in this state, Democrats and Republicans, leaders in the public sector and the private sector and in the state media are of two minds on the subject of economic growth.

Look at the newspaper editorials. The same newspapers who say we need to create new jobs and lower the state's taxes put out editorials opposed to new commercial developments, opposed to transmission lines, opposed to all sorts of things that are absolutely vital for economic growth and job creation.

The state's largest newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is also of two minds on this subject. Their editorial board - of which I am very appreciative - is extraordinarily supportive of a single sales factor tax break, which I think will help promote job creation in this state. Their business editor, however, writes stories quite regularly criticizing single sales as bad idea for Wisconsin's economic future. So even within the paper they are of two minds on this subject.

Complacency has set in at all levels and we need to figure out how to reestablish the consensus for growth we once had, because the results of our complacency are now clear and irrefutable in Wisconsin's economy. Even before the tragedy of September 11th, Wisconsin had the second highest number of layoffs in the nation and the unemployment rates in Racine and Beloit were both nearing 10%. That is a crisis. The only way out of that crisis is to reestablish that consensus we had before.

As I said at the start, we are not challenged by a lack of good ideas or a lack of to-do lists. Our primary challenge is to reestablish an overwhelming bi-partisan public consensus for growth. If we can rebuild that consensus for growth, the to-do lists will take care of themselves. Our talented students will choose to stay here and other bright minds will choose to come here. Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists will invest here. Businesses will come to Wisconsin and expand. State and local governments will partner with new businesses and cut taxes. And Wisconsin will once again become the star of the heartland.