Your Representatives in the News

State Assembly Representative Garey Bies

Two of Bies’ bills were recently signed into law.

The first was Assembly Bill 62, which broadened the definition of “intoxicant” to include hazardous substances that are inhaled or ingested in a manner contrary to their intended purposes.

The second was AB 352, which allows the use of net pens in navigable waters for increasing the survivability of salmon fingerlings stocked in the Great Lakes.

Source:  Bies Press Release

Governor Scott Walker

Walker signed 23 bills into law on Thursday, Dec. 12. One, SB 278, restricts public access to 3,500 acres of managed forestland on and around the proposed Gogebic Taconite mine in the Penokee Hills in Ashland and Iron Counties.

The Managed Forest Law gives landowners lower tax rates in exchange for submitting to forest management and keeping their land open to the public.

Gogebic Taconite wants to build a four-mile open-pit mine to extract iron ore.

Source:  CBS 58

U.S. Representative Reid Ribble

Ribble voted for the budget deal passed by the House and Senate on Thursday.

“While I’m disappointed that this budget couldn’t achieve more deficit reduction, I’m encouraged that Congress will – for the first time since I’ve been in Washington – return to a functioning budget process,” Ribble said in a press release. “This legislation will provide two years of much-needed fiscal certainty for our economy. Our nation’s businesses, families, and our own government can finally plan for the future knowing what Washington is going to do.”

The budget includes $63 billion in spending that had been slated for cuts, but doesn’t increase taxes. It’s predicted to decrease the deficit by $85 billion by 2023.

Sources:  Ribble press release, Wisconsin Rapids Tribune

U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin

Baldwin demanded an investigation into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’s (ATF) sting operation to get guns off streets, following an investigative series of stories by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The Sentinel discovered the ATF used mentally disabled individuals to promote its operations in Milwaukee and at least four other cities, attracted juveniles and paid so much for guns it encouraged stealing.

“In light of these new allegations, I am demanding that the Inspector General’s office complete a comprehensive analysis of the failures associated with the operation in Milwaukee, as well as a review of ATF’s updated processes since details of the initial failed operation came to light,” Baldwin wrote in a letter to Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

Sources:  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Baldwin’s letter to Horowitz

President Barack Obama

Politifact rated “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it” as the Lie of the Year for 2013.

“Boiling down the complicated health care law to a soundbite proved treacherous, even for its promoter-in-chief,” wrote Politifact writer Angie Drobnic Holan. “Obama and his team made matters worse, suggesting they had been misunderstood all along. The stunning political uproar led to this: a rare presidential apology.”

This marked the fourth time in five years the Lie of the Year award has gone to a lie about the Affordable Care Act.

Source:  Politifact