VIDEO: Sen. Baldwin touts accomplishments, vows to work with Trump, Republicans in Western Wisconsin video town hall

WISCONSIN – La Crosse Chamber Executive Director Beth Franklin hosted a video town hall with Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) on Monday with about 200 people joining online. In her introduction Franklin outlined the purpose of the event, highlighting the collaboration with the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce and the focus on Senator Tammy Baldwin’s work and priorities. Franklin acknowledged Senator Baldwin’s advocacy for Western Wisconsin, particularly her support for infrastructure projects and addressing PFAS contamination and infrastructure funding.

“We are honored to have Senator Baldwin with us today and deeply grateful for her steadfast advocacy on behalf of Western Wisconsin over the years,” said Franklin. “She has been a leading voice on issues that matter most to our communities, Senator Baldwin continues to champion important infrastructure projects. Her support of the bipartisan infrastructure law has helped deliver over $5.6 billion for Wisconsin, roads, rail, broadband and water infrastructure. Part of that includes securing over 38 million in federal funding to enhance Wisconsin’s commuter rail services. This investment will significantly improve transportation infrastructure, ensuring better connectivity and commuting options for residents in the La Crosse area. This investment will ensure the popular Amtrak line called borealis is funded for six more years and will continue service to our region, and it ensures funding for two passenger rail studies for Eau Claire.”

On addressing PFAS Franklin said Senator Baldwin has also been instrumental in addressing the challenges posed by PFAs contamination in our community’s water supplies.

“Thanks to her support, the Town of Campbell received 5 million to construct a new water utility system,” said Franklin. “While the city of La Crosse secured 3.7 million to install wellhead treatments to combat PFAs chemicals. And the city of Eau Claire received 1.6 million for their remediation efforts.

And Franklin said she was also appreciative of her reintroducing the Made in America Act, which strengthens Buy America requirements to support American businesses, manufacturers and workers, this investment in maximizing the amount of American made materials and labor we use on our infrastructure projects help strengthen our entire economy.

Baldwin said there are number of critical issues she is focused on but one of the biggest priorities is getting a farm bill done that has been stalled for two years. Baldwin cited a number of examples of working across the aisle, including working with former Republican Congressman Sean Duffy when he was in Congress and former Senator, now Vice-President J.D. Vance.

“I have a long history of working across the party aisle with Republicans,” said Baldwin. “Including a history of working with President Trump when that makes sense for Wisconsin, and I’m going to continue to do that. So I have a tradition as a senator when there’s an election and we have newcomers to the Senate, I like to sit down with the new Republican members of the Senate, and in fact, we’re scheduling those meetings now. They’re going to begin very shortly. But what I do is I look and see what sort of common ground we already have. You know, most people who’ve just won an election had an agenda that they talked about during their campaigns. They I can look at the state they represent and see if their state has some similarities with Wisconsin. Is it an agricultural state, a rural state? Is it a manufacturing state? All of those things are our fertile ground to figure out ways in which we can work together. And I can tell you, after the last election, I walked out of most of those meetings with my new Republican colleagues with agreements to sponsor bills together and to get things done. Believe it or not, I had two bills last session with JD Vance, our current vice president, and so I’m able to look for ways in which we can work together to advance the interests of the states and the people that we represent.”

FARM BILL

Baldwin said that track record of working with her others will help in working on issues like the farm bill.

“I see an opportunity to partner with my colleagues across the aisle,” said Baldwin. “Especially on issues like the farm bill we are overdue for reauthorizing the farm bill, and I see so many opportunities to team up with Republicans in agricultural states and rural states to pass certain provisions of the Farm Bill and advance rural development policies. I also see opportunities to work with my Republican colleagues on Buy America legislation and by America rules that we make a part of other legislation that’s moving through. For those who don’t know what Buy America means, it’s the simple proposition that when we’re spending tax dollars, we should be keeping those here in the US, supporting us workers and us small businesses, rather than shipping those tax dollars overseas to source components for things that we’re building, by way of example. And then I also see many opportunities to work across the party aisle on stopping the flow of fentanyl and addressing both the mental health crisis and substance use disorder crisis that we’re experiencing in Wisconsin and throughout the country. So those are some of the things that I think we can work across the party aisle on and hopefully really deliver.”

Baldwin said she also concerned about the issues that impact the high cost of living that include issues like housing, daycare, keeping the cost of prescription drugs down.

MEDICAL COSTS

“You know, in La Crosse County, by way of an example, in Western Wisconsin, the home prices have skyrocketed in recent years,” said Baldwin. “And in Wisconsin, the median home price has nearly doubled in the past 10 years. And that’s a dramatic impact for folks. We also see rising costs in health care. More than 20% of Wisconsinites have said that they have forgone their medication because of the cost of accessing that medication. In terms of my work to try to help cut the costs of prescription drugs, I was very supportive of the bill that allowed Medicare to start negotiating down the cost of prescription drugs. They finished their first round of negotiations last year and brought each of the drugs negotiated down considerably in price. And now the second round of negotiations is beginning, but also I led an investigation in one of my committees related to the high cost of asthma inhalers. The cost of asthma inhalers in the U.S. was sometimes 10, 15, 20 times more than we saw the cost being in other countries, and we examined that difference and exposed that very publicly, and three out of the four major manufacturers of asthma inhalers have agreed, under the scrutiny of that investigation, to lower their costs, capping them at no more than $35 per month out of pocket for the asthma inhalers that they make. And again, we are now starting a new round of Medicare negotiations, and hope that we can press this incoming administration to do even more and hasten the pace of that. Look, we have a new Congress and a new president. I’m here to fight for Wisconsin that’s always been my priority, and that means responding to the issues that you’ve brought to my attention, cutting costs for Wisconsin families, whether that be prescription drugs, the energy bills, rent or mortgage, creating past pathways to good paying family, supporting jobs, supporting things like expanding apprenticeship opportunities and career and technical education and bringing more jobs back by passing new Buy America rules, which I champion.”

HEALTHCARE

Baldwin a big part of keeping medical costs down is preserving the Affordable Care Act.

“We want to make sure that we not only protect the Affordable Care Act, but expand it,” said Baldwin. “And make sure that we expand the premium tax credits that help make that insurance affordable for so many hundreds of 1000’s of Wisconsinites and continue to take on the big pharmaceutical companies and their pricing practices. It’s also important to me to protect everybody’s rights and freedoms, whether that’s access to birth control or IVF or abortion services, or whether that’s protecting the right to vote and access to the ballot box. So look, I have a history of working with Republicans and independents to get things done, to deliver for Wisconsin, and looking for the common ground when we have it.’

HOUSING

Baldwin offered some specific ideas to address the high cost of housing.

“I would say this is an issue that we are going to have to work on at all levels, and it’s government, it’s the private sector, it’s private nonprofits,” said Baldwin. “It’s going to require all of us, and it is a dire situation. Now, as I mentioned in my opening, the cost of housing in Wisconsin, the median price has more than doubled over the past decade, jumping from what used to be the median price was $144,000 in the year 2013 now it’s $294,000 in 2023 and that is out of reach for so Many. Let me give you an example of a few of the ideas that I’m going to be pushing at the federal level. But again, recognizing that this is going to take all of us. It is not a federal government problem to solve alone, but it is something that the federal government can surely help. One of the things I would really support is tax for first time home buyers, we need to give first time home buyers the tools that they need to afford their first homes. And I introduced a bill that does just that with a refundable tax credit worth up to 10% of a homes purchase price, up to a maximum of $15,000 this would be for first time home buyers, because second time home buyers, you could have equity that you can apply to a second home purchase.”

Baldwin pointed to the issue of short-term rentals as a driving force for rising housing costs.

“I know, especially in some of our more urban areas we have seen in the last decade, the current housing shortage exacerbated by wealthy out of state investors, sort of gobbling up some of the housing stock,” said Baldwin. “Some of these are individuals, some of these are private equity funds, and in some cities, we’ve seen that happen with 1000s of housing units. What that means is, number one, those houses are no longer available for home purchase. They’re only available for rent. And when you have out of state investors, you have absentee landlords, and so oftentimes you have both the situation where there’s not a local attention to upkeep of the properties, as well as the potential for jacking up the rent with really no local accountability. I have legislation that I’ll be reintroducing this session that will try to get at both ends of this problem, both by disincentivizing these wealthy investors and private equity firms gobbling up Wisconsin’s housing, but if they do, if somebody or an entity does, making sure that they’re charged in a way that makes them part of the solution to create more opportunities for safe, affordable housing.”

CHILDCARE

Baldwin said childcare is another issue where the private sector will need to work with the federal, state and local governments, and non-profits to make childcare more affordable.

“But I also think that this is a particular area where the free market just hasn’t worked very well in fixing these problems,” said Baldwin. “Jjust having more demand hasn’t led to more supply the way it should. And so I do think we should have a bigger policy discussion at the federal level on making sure that families aren’t going bankrupt to pay for for child care, that that that we should be able to figure out a way where that you’re not spending more than, say, 7% of your family income on child care, and that those tuition subsidies that I talked about earlier, that should be coming from both the federal and the state level, allow you to be able to afford childcare without wiping you out. You know, I’ve heard several families talk to me about the fact that their childcare costs for maybe two young children before they start school is more than $25,000 a year, more than they would pay to send that same child to college for one year, and that is unacceptable. So we have, I think, a lot more work to do, but I am, I do sit on the Appropriations Subcommittee that funds childcare, and I’m going to continue to fight to boost that like we were able to last year when we increased that budget by a billion dollars nationwide.”

Baldwin said there are some solutions on the table to address childcare costs.

“I want to say it’s a little bit about how the Child Care Development Block Grant currently works,” said Baldwin. “That is a program funded by the federal government, and the funds in that block grant go to the States by formula, and then the state actually disperses those funds. The funds are used for a couple of different things. One is subsidies for low income parents to be able to afford their child care premiums, so or childcare tuition, and the other way it’s spent by the states with local government is to help develop childcare opportunities. So what we saw the reason why we’re in such a crisis, or one of the many reasons why we’re in such a crisis today is that child care centers and family day care centers, lot of them couldn’t make it through the pandemic. There was a lot of assistance during that time during the pandemic, but the but a lot of them didn’t make it through. And so when people were as we emerged from the pandemic, people getting ready to go back to work, they were finding that in some cases, there were not slots available. I literally talked to mom, who shared the story with me. She said she was she she and her husband were really excited about starting a family, and when she had the pregnancy test and it was positive, she called to get her future baby on a waiting list for childcare, before she called her husband to say, Honey, we’re pregnant, right? It’s, that’s how bad it is right now, but, but anyways, we, I think we have to have an approach that looks at both building back, the adequate number of child care slots, whether that’s through larger child care centers or family child care center centers and helping families afford it in the short term, I think we need to continue, as we have under my leadership, to increase what the federal government puts into that Child Care Development Block Grant so that there are more dollars available for tuition assistance for parents, especially low income parents.”

Baldwin also called for bringing back the child tax credit that helped so many families through COVID. Baldwin emphasized the importance of focusing any tax cuts on working people and making middle class status more attainable. Baldwin said that when the child tax credit was temporarily increased during the pandemic, it lifted half of children who were in poverty out of poverty. She would like to see the child tax credit be made refundable and increased, as it has had a significant impact in supporting families. Baldwin believes the child tax credit is crucial for helping make the costs of raising children more affordable for families. She sees expanding and strengthening the child tax credit as an important part of any upcoming tax reform discussions.

IMMIGRATION

Baldwin also called for increased border security and said she is willing to work with the Trump administration but pointed out there was proposed legislation in the last congress that was scuttled for political reasons.

“So our immigration system is certainly broken,” said Baldwin. “And if we want long standing and meaningful change, it’s got to be Congress that comes together to get that job done. You can’t will it away. You can’t do it by executive order. You know, it needs to be part of our nation’s laws. So let me take up both the immigration part of having an orderly immigration system, but also the border part. Last year, on a bipartisan basis, we put together really strong border security legislation. It doubled the number of people on the job at the border, or, I mean, sorry, it increased by 1500 the number of border patrol agents. It also importantly invested in detection equipment that could speed up our ability to inspect vehicles coming in and out of the country for illicit contents, including fentanyl. Currently without this technology, and without the investment in this technology, we rely on border agents to selectively inspect, you know, a small percentage of the vehicles that come through every day, this technology would be similar to what you see in an airport when you put your luggage through a TSA screener, where you can see inside without opening each each bag. Well, the same can be deployed on a large scale to detect things coming in and out and and so those two things were a part of our bipartisan border bill, which, frankly, got tanked by politics.”

And Baldwin said there needs to be a pathway to citizenship for immigrants that our economy depends on, and have done nothing wrong.

“There are folks here right now who are dreamers, for example, who absolutely need to be given a pathway to citizenship,” said Baldwin. “They have known no other home or country than the United States of America and and certainly I agree that anybody who is here illegally and has committed a crime should be, should be tried and deported, but I think that we need to have a much better system to deal with visas to allow people to be here and work. And one of the things we said at the outside is we have a very tight labor market right now, and people are very concerned about what some of these executive orders will mean as people who are, you know, paying taxes, showing up for work every day, bolstering our economy may become subject to some of these, some of these raids and efforts.

CONSERVATION AND WATER QUALITY

“I’m going to just look at our state’s east coast for a second, we’ve had and North Coast, I should say we’ve had something called the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative in place for many years,” said Baldwin. “Which has led to incredible increase in resilience and restoration of our Great Lakes. We need to do the same on the Mississippi River, and so I am strongly supportive of the Mississippi River Restoration and Resilience Initiative, M, R, R, I, as it’s known. It’s basically patterned after the success of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, and so I’ve introduced legislation to do this similar initiative on the Mississippi River, and I’m working really hard to make sure that it is strongly bipartisan. And if you think about the senators who represent Mississippi River states, that’s a really great bipartisan group of senators, and I’m hopeful that we can really elevate that that focus this legislation would create a non regulatory and collaborative initiative to coordinate efforts and invest in building resilience to decrease flooding and improve water quality, restore wildlife habitat and stop the spread of aquatic invasive species.”

FUNDING FOR COMMUNITY PROJECTS

“I look forward to working with community communities to do even more,” said Baldwin. “There’s some community driven projects, for example, Jackson County’s Child Care Network reached out to me, and we were able to deliver a million dollars to increase access to child care in Jackson County, the hill view Community Services Center. I was able to secure a grant of a million dollars to provide housing for unsheltered people and acts and address affordability of child care in La Crosse County in Prairie du Chien, I was able to work with the community to deliver $5 million to build a new public safety center, bringing fire And police and other services together in one location, and through the bipartisan infrastructure law, we’ve been able to expand broadband in rural communities. That is ongoing work, but we were able to secure over $1 billion for the state of Wisconsin specifically to try to get high speed internet access in rural communities.”

Sen. Baldwin also secured $5 million to help offset the cost of building a new Viroqua Fire Station.