Empower Wisconsin | June 8, 2020
MILWAUKEE — Gov. Tony Evers has been a man without a plan through much of the unprecedented crises hitting during his second year in office.
Former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch says Evers’ lack of planning and his failure to see the big picture has made life harder on Wisconsin than it had to be. She pointed to the debacle at the state Department of Workforce Development where tens of thousands of out-of-work Wisconsinites had to wait weeks, even months for unemployment benefits.
“People inside the government should have known that if you cancel the economy people are going to need unemployment in order to sustain their payments for rent, their electricity bills, credit cards, home mortgages, car loans,” Kleefisch, a Republican who served alongside former Gov. Scott Walker, told Empower Wisconsin Friday on the Jay Weber show.
Kleefisch also talked about Evers’ absence of a plan for the next school year, all the more astonishing because the Democrat served for a decade as the state’s education chief. As Empower Wisconsin first reported, the governor and the Department of Public Instruction have been slow to put forward a plan of action, to the growing frustration of parents and teachers.
“He should have had researchers on it much, much earlier than what we’re talking about now,” she said. “It’s almost like the unemployment situation where we knew something was coming …”
The former lieutenant governor, who is considering a run against Evers in 2022, said she didn’t have any news to break on Friday. But she did discuss the importance of getting more conservative women to run for office.
Rebecca Kleefisch is our guest on today’s edition of Empower Wisconsin’s PowerUp podcast.
