Fred ClarkMarch 24, 2025
Host: Fred Clark
Guest: Representative Angela Stroud
Show Summary
In this episode of Pulse of the Bay, host Fred Clark interviews State Representative Angela Stroud, who shares her experiences and insights as a new member of the Wisconsin Assembly.
The conversation covers her initial impressions of the political landscape in Madison, the dynamics within the Democratic caucus, the unique characteristics of the 73rd Assembly District, and the challenges she faces in her legislative work, particularly regarding issues affecting Lake Superior and education.
Rep. Stroud emphasizes the importance of bipartisanship and community engagement while discussing the upcoming state budget and its implications for public services.
Rep. Stroud also discusses the dynamics of the state budget, the role of the Joint Finance Committee, and the importance of community engagement in governance. She highlights the challenges faced by local institutions, particularly in education and healthcare, and the significant impact of federal budget cuts on state resources. And, she emphasizes the critical role of Medicaid in the healthcare system and argues for the necessity of government investment in public services to ensure a healthier, more equitable society.
Show Transcript
Fred Clark (00:06.542)
Hello and welcome to Pulse of the Bay, the news and public affairs show from 97.7 FM WBCB in Ashland, Wisconsin. We are the voice of Chequamegon Bay.
WVCB 97.7 FM is community radio. Our programming, our music, news, documentary and discussion strengthens our sense of place and a connection among communities along the south shore of Lake Superior. You can check us out at wvcb.org.
I’m Fred Clark. I’m one of your hosts on Pulse of the Bay. Pulse of the Bay is a program for sharing news, events and in-depth discussions with interesting people of all kinds throughout the south shore and shoreline.
Today, I am excited that we’ll be talking with State Representative Angela Stroud. Angela is serving in her first term as representative to the 73rd Assembly District. As many listeners will know, Angela has been a resident of Ashland County since 2012 and until last year she was on the faculty at Northland College.
After her election in November 2024 and taking office in January, Angela has been making the almost weekly trip to Madison and representing the newly drawn 73rd Assembly District. She’s been working on issues for people in the community she represents here at home. We’re sitting down today at the Blue Wave and Sandbar in Ashland looking out over Chequamegon Bay and really excited to be talking with Angela today. Angela, welcome. Good morning.
Angela: Thanks, Fred. Thanks for having me. Absolutely.
Fred Clark (02:11.023)
So as a new representative in Madison, there’s got to be an awful lot to take in. What are some of your first reactions, some of your first impressions about our political process in Madison?
Angela:
Yeah, there is so much to take in. It’s been a very intense first couple of months and you know part of that is just kind of figuring out what this job is and how it works and there’s so many people to meet. There’s so much to learn.
And then there’s the politics of it all. So one of the things, you start out so optimistic that we can get stuff done. And I was really, I am really in an ongoing way, focused on trying to be an office committed to bipartisanship. And I want to develop relationships with as many Republicans as possible, legislators.
That becomes challenging when we have the situation we’ve had the last couple of weeks where there’s just bills that are completely for political purposes. Republicans know they have no chance of getting signed. The governor’s already said he’s going to veto them or he’s vetoed them the exact same thing the last two sessions. But they get put out anyway and they get put out just to try to make Democrats look bad.
To me that’s just so cynical and it’s the part of politics everyone hates the most. And it’s really a hard thing to deal with as an elected representative because you know where your values lie and you see how immigrants or trans people are being used as cannon fodder for political gain.
That’s just deeply disappointing. And so I think in this job, you know, the important thing is, all right, that part’s over, put it behind you and move on and try to continue to commit to the values that led me to do this in the first place. Yeah. Wow. Well, thank you for doing that for all of us. You know, it’s a swing state and most listeners know that Wisconsin is very divided politically. We’ve elected a Democratic governor for the last two terms.
Fred
We’ve elected a Republican U.S. Senator and a Democratic U.S. Senator for several cycles now. We’re a state with almost equal representation of people who identify with both parties and with independents. So a lot of us expect that as our state representative, you’ll go down there and you all will work together to sort of come to consensus on the best ideas. But it doesn’t always work that way with the party system, does it?
Angela
It doesn’t and one of the things I have learned is that a lot of that has to do with the way the parties think about power.
Because Democrats haven’t had power for 15 years. We don’t really know what Democrats would do if they had power, but we do know what Republicans are doing with their power. so, know, Speaker Voss controls his caucus with an iron fist.
And so I won’t name names, but I do have a brand new Republican colleague who…We talk regularly, he’s been in my office a couple of times, we have some things we want to work on. And he’s very committed to doing what he thinks is right and not letting the powers that be control him.
In one of those first meetings we had, he walked out and my staffer said, unfortunately, either that perspective won’t last long or he won’t last long. Because, you know, that’s just not how the Republican caucus has operated. Vos controls everything when it comes to elections. Who’s going to get money? Who isn’t going to get money? I have to fundraise my own campaign money. On the Republican side, they don’t really have to fundraise because the party controls who’s going to run and who’s going to get support and controls what happens in the Capitol. So that’s a totally different situation than on the Democratic side. I, you know, if we are in the
majority in two years, I don’t suspect that we’re going to become like them because we just have a different kind of caucus with different values and so I get to represent the people of the 73rd truly. And you know there are some things where to be a Democrat you have to support certain things. You know you can’t trample on people’s civil rights for example. That’s just not acceptable. If you run as a Democrat you’ve got to have people’s backs. But other than that there is quite bit of freedom in terms of how I would vote and the issues I would support. So far. I’ll get back to you on that. Well that’s what we all expected and hoped for.
Fred Clark
So that’s great to hear. So two years ago there were 36 members of the Democratic caucus I think and an assembly of 99 members and this year there are 45. So tremendous amount of new new representatives in the state assembly this year. What’s that feel like?
Angela
Yeah, we picked up a lot of seats and in addition we had some people move to the Senate and some people retire. So total with Democratic assembly members, 23 of us are new. It’s super exciting. There’s a lot of energy. You there’s 22 returners. So there’s more first year representatives than there are incumbents.
Lots of energy, lots of excitement, and a lot of people who are just now figuring out what this job is. Sure, right, Figuring out where the bathrooms are, and what the rules of the chamber are. I mean, there’s so much to learn. This job is so intense. And I like intensity, so it’s perfect fit for me. But even as someone who loves intensity, boy, this is a lot.
The new energy is exciting and it’s good for the party because we have a lot of people who this is really their first time doing anything like this. And so we bring an outsider’s perspective in a lot of ways. And to the credit of our Democratic colleagues who’ve been there a while and the leadership in particular, they’ve been completely open. So we’re not seeing this resistance to having the new people have ideas. In fact, they’re completely receptive, very responsive. The Democratic leadership in the assembly is very, very impressive
Fred Clark (08:08.435)
Yeah, oh, that’s so encouraging. And with 23 new members, it’s almost like by definition, you’re creating a new culture within that group.
Angela
Yeah, that’s right. And we’re still figuring that out as we go. And it’s also part of this is with ungerry-mandered maps, with actual fair maps and fair representation. We also have geographic diversity. So we have a lot of reps who have, you know, big rural swaths of their districts. We have people from all over the state for the first time in a while. And so it’s interesting when we debate things on the floor, Republicans keep trying to say, you know, far left extremist Democrats from Madison and Milwaukee. And it’s like, wait a minute, we’ve got people from all over the state now. This isn’t the past. You know, you need some new ideas there.
We have people from the Eau Claire region and central Wisconsin and me up here in the far north. The farthest north we used to have was one representative in Eau Claire.
Now we have reps all over the state with a truly rural perspective, helping people understand how we think about things in this part of the state. And it is different.
Fred
One of the bigger districts in the state geographically too, correct?
Angela
Geographically, it’s the second biggest. Chans Green, south of me, has the biggest geographically. But it’s one of the biggest and it’s definitely the farthest from Madison. Yeah. So there’s a lot of diversity in this district, as we know, people who live here. So, yeah, there’s it’s just a perspective that I think has been very helpful.
I’ve got a lot of colleagues whose perspectives are just really helpful and we’re really broadening what it means to be a Wisconsin Democrat. Sure. that’s that’s really good to hear.
Fred
So tell us about the 73rd. What’s that district look like? It’s newly redrawn. Yeah, totally brand new. We used to have districts up here that ran kind of north-south, but this one runs east-west from Superior on one end to the eastern edge of Bad River on the other end. And it doesn’t go much farther south than Highway 2. So it’s almost the entirety of the south shore of Lake Superior. There’s a tiny little bit in Iron County that’s in the 74th. But I have four cities, 26 towns, four villages, and two reservations. That’s a lot of units of government. It is. It’s a lot of meetings to go to. is. Yeah, yeah. And school districts too. Five school districts. you know, that’s when my colleagues hear how much I have to cover, they are very impressed. I have one colleague in Milwaukee whose entire district is 22 city blocks.
Yeah, that you could walk in an afternoon. So it’s a completely different world. I mean, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. You know, this is to me the best district in the state. mean, not just having the lake, but having Bad River and Red Cliff and the city of Superior, which I’ve loved getting to know. And it’s just it’s such a dynamic, interesting, truly blue part of the state.
There’s just so much that we have to teach people down south.
Fred
And so your experience and representing two Chippewa tribes here, really important aspect of the work. And that’s one of the reasons I hope the shape of this district never changes, because having the almost entirety of the lakeshore, that’s what unites us.
People in Superior have been turning toward a recognition that even though it’s one of the industrial hubs of the state, they want to have what we have here, a protected lake shore where we’re focused on clean water and we’re focused on making sure that we are protecting this incredible asset for seven generations, which is what we’ve learned from, you know, the native populations here and this culture that’s committed to place. And so this shape with this lake uniting us really helps to clarify a lot of of what’s at stake when we talk about issues. And it also just helps us be grounded in a sense of place in a way that I think a lot of other representatives just don’t really understand. So it sounds like it’s made it really natural for you to develop a message throughout the district that really resonates from east to west. Yeah. I mean, the number one issue in my campaign was protecting Lake Superior.
That’s something that everybody agrees with. truly, mean, people, even Republicans will tell me, yeah, I agree. I love the lake. We have to protect it.
Then when we talk about particular policies and issues that can be threats to the lake, we might disagree. But let’s come back to that shared value because I think that helps us all to understand how we might want to think about very specific policy issues. Whether it’s PFAS or petroleum infrastructure that it poses threats to the lake, we need to get very serious on those topics because this is our drinking water and this is this body of water that we love so much.
Fred
Great to hear. So tell us, we’ll come back to some more local issues, but tell us more about the work in Madison right now. What are your committee assignments and what’s present in those committees?
Angela
Sure, so I’m on two committees, colleges and universities, which makes sense given my background, and sporting heritage. So, so far on colleges and universities, we’ve had two committee hearings, one was on a small issue related to one particular technical college.
And the other was this bill that was introduced a couple weeks ago and heard on the floor last week, which is AB 102 that was trying to ban trans women from playing collegiate sports and banning trans women from any locker room facility on any UW or technical college campus throughout the state. And that really, that second part is particularly egregious.
We can have policies on where do we draw the lines with gender in sports. I actually don’t think that’s controversial. If we were actually advocating for and interested in trans people, we could have a nuanced discussion about that. But what’s happening is this widespread attack against trans people. I mean, we heard four different pieces of legislation on the floor last week that…
are just laced with dehumanizing language. And there were elements of the legislation that were very, very problematic. Unfortunately, one of the things I’ve learned in Madison is that sometimes we have people who are advocating for legislation that I don’t think they even understand.
Fred
Yeah. And you gave a floor speech on one of those bills was it AB 100?
Angela
It was 102, but 100 it was the K-12 version and 102 was the college’s version. So it’s basically the same bill. Okay.
Fred
That was a very powerful floor speech. Thank you. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes.
Angela
Yeah, you know, my background in higher ed not only helps me understand how colleges and universities work, but I’ve spent my career reading and writing on these topics and teaching about them. So it’s been quite helpful. They didn’t know who they were messing with. It’s been quite helpful. When I need to make a case for why something is a problem, I’m grateful to have the training and the background and the experience to clearly articulate what makes this piece of legislation
And this is a topic I’ve been teaching for 12 years at Northland and three years before that in graduate school. So yeah, I feel prepared for this job. good. And so what was the outcome on those bills? Did they pass on party line votes? They passed on party line votes. The governor has already vowed to veto all of them. So it’s just it was political theater. And unfortunately, it does a lot of damage to trans people in the process. So we’re sacrificing a whole segment of people to score political points. And that’s the calculation. Well, trans people are only 1 % of the population and there’s a percentage of the population, who knows what it is, that has some uneasiness or some weariness about what this all means. And so it’s exploitative and it’s so cynical and that part of the job is hard because you’re using people as political cannon fodder.
Last week, you know, it was a challenging week. I was so glad to come home on Friday. I’m so glad I don’t have to go back for a little bit. You know, I’m still building up my thick skin around those sorts of things. so, especially early on, I’m glad that I’m not gonna be there every week. I need to come back here, spend time with my people in this community, with this lake, and really stay centered on the things that matter most. And yeah, remember what you’re going…
Fred
Exactly. You know, as people have said to me, if you look at the rules of how most legislatures work, and Wisconsin’s no exception, they’re designed to generate dialogue and debate and consider other opinions and maybe result in outcomes that are different than what went in.
You don’t always see that happen very often in a partisan system,
Angela
You don’t, but I have to say I do have colleagues who’ve been around a little bit longer who said that after the committee hearings around…this anti-trans legislation, they did notice a small change in their Republican colleagues during the executive committee where people come in and actually vote on whether or not a bill will go from committee to the floor for a vote. And one colleague in particular said there were some Republicans who one said, you know, maybe this shouldn’t have been a piece of legislation. Maybe we should have had an informational hearing instead. And so to those people’s credit, they were, it seems like, impacted.by some of the testimony they heard in committee.
I think partly that’s, you know, fairer maps are making people be a little bit more open to learning. I think it’s also, you know, it’s really hard to stay calloused against people who are coming to committee hearings and explaining to you why taking away their health care is going to be devastating for them. And so I would encourage people, you know, there’s parts of this that are, you know, totally cynical, but we have to keep explaining, unfortunately, to others
why we need the things we need. Now with the federal level, why we need Medicaid, why we need national parks, why we need public schools. We have to keep making that case and we can’t give up on the idea that clearly conveying a message about the importance of these things can have and does have an impact on others. So showing up matters and making these stories personal and human matters. Showing up matters, telling your story matters, contacting your representatives matters. I mean, it just does. And so for as much as there’s parts of this that are cynical,
it’s really important that people realize that their voice is a critical part of this process. Yeah, that’s the public service at its best. Totally.
Fred
Yeah. So one of the first orders of business in any session is the state budget. Yeah. So you’re drinking out of that fire hose too among other things. So what would you foresee as being big factors in the state budget this year and do you have any sense of where the big friction points will be or what?
Angela
To be honest I’m still learning about that. It’s so talk about something that’s opaque. The budget process is totally opaque so you probably know more about it than I do given your experience as a former state rep. You know the governor puts out his proposal and really my understanding is you know that’s a vision. If Democrats were in charge, this is the kind of stuff we would be doing. And it’s super exciting. It’s fully funding public schools, which means a lot of people don’t understand the nuance of that. means in particular raising the reimbursement rate for special education, which would transform public school budgets. No more referendums would be required. We would actually have the money we need and it would be coming from the state rather than just from property taxes, which is an unsustainable model.
So,Governor Evers is strong on a lot of things, but fundamentally he’s a teacher and he gets public education. And so if Democrats were in charge, we would see public education in Wisconsin getting back to what it was when we had one of the best systems in the country.
Right now, there’s something that happens when you talk about public education where people say, why should we keep putting money into a failing system? And money doesn’t solve problems. And you know what? Money doesn’t solve problems unless your problem is you don’t have enough money. Because when you don’t have enough money, you need more money.
Money isn’t everything of course, but we are losing teachers to other states, we are losing kids to a private system because we don’t have actually the resources that they’re looking for. are just broken in some respects and we’re broken because the system was intentionally broken by people who are opposed to public schools.
I’m fundamentally in favor, and so are all Democrats, in favor of public schools. And so we need to fund them adequately. We need to fix them. And there’s a clear vision for that in the governor’s budget. And that’s one of literally thousands of things. So I think that’s a flagship topic for Democrats and for this governor in particular. And it just exemplifies what the democratic perspective is, which is we all do better when we all do better. And we need government to work.
Because government is the foundation on which a healthy society is built. So you don’t have a strong economy if you don’t have strong public schools and childcare and healthcare. You’re not gonna have an economy that just magically appears when those things are broken. And you need housing to have workers. Like all these things are interconnected. And when government plays its role, it creates a strong foundation and then other things can be built upon that.
So, no, government isn’t everything, but it is critical and we don’t have everything unless we have a strong government. There are the investments that make all those other community benefits and strong economy possible, right?
schools are. Exactly. are families with children. When you’re trying to figure out where do you want to move and this you know not everyone has the luxury of saying where do I want to move. But if you’re one of those families who could pick where you want to move what you need yeah exactly you need housing. Yeah. You need good schools. need child care and then you can think about that as a place you might want to move. You know and so our job is to figure out how to create the conditions where all of those things work well so that people can thrive and live lives of meaning and purpose.
So, you know you see other things in the governor’s budget around Child care is a huge focus. You see things around housing you see things around, you know these fundamental issues these fundamental topics that are required to have a
basic. These are basic things. You know, this is not some radical left-wing conspiracy. This is just like how to have a society 101. It’s very basic. Right.
Fred
And in a small town, your public school or the elementary school might be the most important civic institution that you have.
Angela
You know, I think that’s absolutely true. And I would even say it’s not even just in a small town. mean, you go to the…suburbs in the state and you’ll see the same thing and those schools have massive investments because we know when you invest in kids you’re investing in you know that society you’re investing in and it’s so cliche to say you’re investing in the future but it’s true some cliches are true yeah and and so it’s just
You know, it’s folly to think that you could starve the government of funds and things will work out. And you have a thriving society. We have decades of evidence that that’s not true. I’m actually quite amazed that we still have a party that runs on that platform. But the reason we do is because there are many wealthy people who know they’re going to be fine no matter what. And so tax cuts for them and tax cuts for the businesses they own is the highest priority. Yeah.
I just disagree with that philosophy completely.
Fred
So as I watched the governor’s budget address on television, I was noting the number of times that both sides of the aisle stood up and applauded, and the number of times I think I saw was zero. So it didn’t leave me encouraged about the cooperation in the budget that’s going to come out of the Joint Finance Committee. Was it fair to say it’s probably going to look very different than what the governor proposed?
Angela
It’ll look very different. My understanding is that once it gets to joint finance, they strip out pretty much everything and they start over. But I’ll tell you, one of the things, know, one of the moments in the budget address was when the governor talked about postpartum Medicaid expansion. That’s a Republican bill.
Republicans authored it. We have a huge number of Republican co-sponsors on both sides of that bill. And they didn’t even stand up and applaud their own bill. Why? the governor’s behind it. Because the governor’s behind it and because Robin Voss has promised he’s not going to pass it. And so it’s just, mean, when they can’t even applaud their own bill, you know there’s something wrong. Right. Well, we’ll stay tuned on that.
Fred Clark (25:55.095)
And I believe the Joint Finance Committee is scheduled now. There are field hearings and there’ll be one in Hayward on April 28th. We’ll get that on the website too for WCB listeners.
Angela
And everyone in this region should know that we are very fortunate that our state senator is on joint finance. So we have particular power here to contact our local reps. If you’re in the 73rd, I’m your state rep. But if you’re in the 73rd, your senator is Romain Quinn. Contact his office and talk about parts of the budget that you really want to see go through and he’s got a lot of power. Anyone on joint finance is powerful. I have people come to me and say will you give us more money for X, Y, and Z and I’m like well I’d love to but I don’t really have any power.
Fred
Well we hope to get Senator Quinn on this show in the future. great. That will be really important and I’m glad you pointed that out. So the Hayward Budget Listening Session on the 28th, these are open events that every citizen is invited to come testify about what’s important and it’s an opportunity for anyone who wants to do that.
Angela
Absolutely, and your voice matters. People really want your feedback and so please do attend. So before we leave Madison, how about some of your own personal priorities? Is there legislation that you’re working on directly or policies?
I have some colleagues who are like, I’m ready for this legislation, that legislation. I can’t imagine taking that perspective. Right now, really what I’m focused on is there are some district level issues, whether it’s particular issues in Superior or this side of the district that I’m trying to help navigate through. And so I’m really focused on good governance, communication, figuring out what this job is so I can be as effective as possible. And part of that is the pragmatic reality that there is no piece of legislation that a Democrat’s going to author when we’re in the minority that Republicans are going to care about or give the light of day to. So I’m really just focused on doing what I can as best I can from this position in the minority. And I think the legislation ideas are going to come later.
Fred
Yeah, OK. But as a state representative to our state government, you have a lot of ability to affect what happens here at home. So what are some of the issues that you’re working on or active with here?
Angela
There’s an issue specific to Superior with lead lateral replacements that I’m trying to help out. But on the Chequamegon Bay side, know, the Bad River has some dynamics that I’m trying to help navigate. I’m really focused, well I should say I’m really interested in focusing on what comes next for Northland College. I am in communication with the governor’s office to try to help figure out how to navigate. That’s challenging. It’s a private institution. There’s only so much that the state is able to do there. But my hope would be that we would have an open community-based collaborative process to ensure that this extraordinarily important asset is really utilized in the best possible way for the benefit of the people in this community.
I’m not sure what’s gonna happen next, so stay tuned on that.
Fred
That’s definitely of major concern for everyone in the area and for me. So glad to hear that. And on last week’s show we had Tom Fitz and Elizabeth Andre and Emily McGillivray, all your former colleagues in Northland, talking about the new Northland Collaborative. But what really came out of that conversation was that that kind of community conversation that you described is so important and I think the groundwork for that to happen so that everyone with a stake in Northland, not just the legal institution, but the whole community that is part of Northland and depends on Northland, is involved in that conversation.
Angela
Yeah, and you know, the rationale for that is, you know, everybody feels the impact of even one business opening or closing in this area. And to have an anchor institution like a college close is devastating.
And we have hundreds of people in this community who’ve dedicated their careers to that place or who were educated there. We have hundreds of millions of cumulative dollars that have gone run through that institution, whether it’s in the form of donations from the local community or tax dollars and the Wisconsin grant. And so even though it’s a private institution, the public is deeply embedded in that institution and in all kinds of ways. So we need that to be whatever the 2.0 version for that campus is, has to be as vibrant as possible to be for the benefit of everyone. and especially today with so much going on in the world that affects other institutions around us.
Fred
Obviously everyone’s listening and following news about what’s happening in Washington and huge changes to the federal government and federal agencies which are already beginning to
affect both the lives of people who are federal employees as well as the important programs and functions that the federal government provides.
The state government is not a silo, we’re directly dependent on what happens in Washington. So can you talk about impacts you’re seeing right now here in the 73rd already and also how that might affect things at the state level that you’re responsible for?
Angela
Yeah, the state budget last, last, by NAM was around $100 billion and $28 billion. So 28 % comes from the federal government. And that’s, that’s a huge number.
When you think about cuts to the federal government, we can’t just backfill that number. There’s, you know, this surplus we’ve been sitting on for a while. It’s only $4 billion. So $28 billion is a lot of money. You know, a weeks ago, we started to see cuts to the federal workforce in the Shawarma-Gin Bay. A judge’s order has meant that some of those jobs have been reinstated. that’s a fluctuating… Federal workforce cuts is a fluctuating dynamic. And I don’t know how that’s all going to settle. The chaos inflicted by the Trump administration means I think we’re gonna see these like fits and starts of changes and then we’re gonna see the judiciary step in and it’s very uncertain.
The one place though that I think is most…top of mind for me and for a lot of our other representatives, our federal representatives, is the potential cuts to Medicaid. The proposed cuts, 800 billion over 10 years, that would be devastating. I mean, I don’t think the typical person understands how Medicaid interacts with the entire healthcare system. So in our district, we are rural, remote and that means that we have these healthcare institutions that are kind of satellite.
And we are lucky in Ashland, we have this great hospital. We actually have a lot of here. We talked earlier about the foundation of government. The foundation of our healthcare system, especially in rural areas, but elsewhere too, is Medicaid. So it’s the funding that Medicaid brings in that creates this stabilizing force for our healthcare system. And then that interacts with private insurance.
So, I mean, and we’re talking about a situation in which…our reimbursement rates are awful. So we’re already doing a bad job in some respects at the state level when we could have been doing much better had we taken Medicaid expansion. we take Medicaid expansion back in 2010. and so we’ve been losing out on billions of dollars, literally billions of dollars just because of political reasons, to the detriment of the people of this state and health care providers who would be way better off if they had had those resources.
If we see the cuts to Medicaid that have been proposed, which analysts say, to give the tax cuts to the ultra wealthy that Trump wants, we have to cut somewhere. Our national deficit is way too big already, and it’s going to grow by trillions every year. I mean, Trump is personally responsible for the biggest contribution to our deficit of any president in the modern era. And so those cuts to Medicaid would directly threaten the few nursing homes we have in this district, for example.
Fred
And unlike Medicare or Social Security, which we all understand if you benefit from those programs because it comes to you with that name, Medicaid is distributed through lots of different programs and agencies, right?
Angela
So my ability to go to a clinic and have
rate for my services, it doesn’t say Medicaid on the bill. Yeah, Badger Care in Wisconsin, it’s almost all called Badger Care or Badger Care Plus. But then, and you know, I forget the names, I should commit them to memory, but then there are other funds that are for people with disabilities. Yeah. Some of whom… work, some of whom can’t work because of the nature of their disability. I heard a statistic the other day that 68 % of people who receive Medicaid in Wisconsin work. So the idea that this isn’t people who work, it’s just not true. But you’re right, a lot of people we’re finding in other states in particular, don’t realize, they think Medicaid is someone else. Someone else has Medicaid. And they’re like, no, I don’t have Medicaid, I have, for example, badger care. Like, no, that is Medicaid. And we just call it these state names because the administers the program and they you know but and badger care you know has been around for a long time and and so but that you’re right that is federal money that supports health care for low-income people yeah and people with disabilities yeah and one of the things I’ve learned is that some of those low-income people are also on Medicare because they’re 65 or older okay and that’s that’s the big source of funding for nursing homes it’s people who are 65 or older who are on met who have Medicare but who also have Medicaid because their incomes are so And the income thresholds…
In this state, a person who makes $14,000 or less in a year qualifies. It’s around $14,000. And so we’re talking about very low incomes. What will those people do? How do you get health insurance in this country? You have to have a good job. So, okay, well, you want health insurance? Just go get a good job. 50 % of jobs in this country do not offer health care. So you literally have no options. This is exactly the point why we need government to work.
Because the problem is if you get in a car accident or you fall or you get sick, you’re probably going to end up in a hospital whether you have health insurance or not. You don’t say at the point where you need it the most, forget it I’m not gonna go. You go and you know I guess I’ll just pay for this the rest of my life or I’ll file for bankruptcy which is the number one cause of bankruptcy in this country. And so what ends up happening is we all, all the rest of us who have health insurance end up paying more for that care. Because whether we like it or not and I actually kind of like it, we’re all in this together. And healthcare is one of those places where you really see that. And so the only thing that happens when we don’t have widespread access to health insurance is people are sicker and it costs more for everyone. It’s not a positive for anyone. The only people who want us to cut health insurance are the people who want to have the lowest taxes possible. But taxes are just the cost of living in society.
Fred
And yeah, you can starve yourself of resources if that’s the philosophy you want to take, but your society will be weaker, sicker, and less safe as a result. And that’s just not a cost that we should be paying in the richest country in the world. and you just extrapolate all the costs of being weaker and sicker and having a shorter life and the earning that you didn’t achieve because you weren’t able to. That cost gets compounded.
Angela
It’s so true. I mean, we could make a moral argument. that we are better off morally and people are better off and all of those positives on the moral side.
Or you can make an economic argument. We are better off economically when people have health insurance because for all the reasons you just said, they’re more productive, they stay in the workforce, they’re not at home because they’re sick and unable to work. But the thing I’ve learned is the moral argument and the economic argument are one in the same. It turns out that when we do the right thing morally, we also are better off economically. And I think that that is the core misconception. Because I think that some people, they hear that we have the worst outcomes in terms of health in this country and we pay the most. Or they hear that in the richest country in the world.
And they think, well, maybe that’s the cost. Maybe to be the richest country in the world, we can’t offer health insurance. Maybe those two things are connected in a causal way. But what we don’t realize is, we’re the richest country in the world because of our very particular, or at least for now, we’re the richest country in the world. I worry about Donald Trump’s philosophies. But because of our particular geopolitical location and historical formation, we would be even richer. Truly, we would be even richer as a country if we took care of our people in a fundamental way. And I think people have a hard time believing that because how can you be richer when you invest more? And it’s like, it’s the same fundamental dynamic that other people have. When you invest more, you grow your wealth. And when you grow your wealth, you’re richer. yeah.
Fred
Well, we became the richest country in the world while supporting other countries around the world with USAID and other…and global diplomacy and growing a middle class in the past that actually was, had more people, had a better standard of life and quality of living than maybe at any other time in our country.
Angela
It’s such a good point. We actually became the richest country when we invested the most. Yeah. that’s, and ever since then we’ve been stepping away from making those investments and we’ve become weaker as a country.
Fred
Yeah. So we’ll be following this Medicaid issue because the…it’s 1.7 trillion dollars that Congress has dedicated itself to cutting out of the budget in order to pay for these tax continuation of tax cuts for billionaires. Almost half of that is going to need to come out of the committee that oversees Medicaid and that’s the reason this is such an important issue right now.
Angela,
And I think people the lie that our government is super bloated and we can find places to cut unfortunately for people who ran on that or who has been selling that to people, go look for places to cut and you actually find we’ve been starving our government. And there aren’t many places to cut. And if you want to look for places to cut, the military is the one place where we have an enormous budget where there is waste, fraud and abuse. And that’s known. The military has failed every audit they’ve ever had. All these other agencies, including USAID, have been audited forever and they always pass the audit because you know these are relatively small agencies. And so you know I do agree that we need to look for places.
We need to look at places where we can find efficiencies. And in our healthcare system, for example, there is inefficiency up and down because there are too many hands in the pot making money off of our system. And we should figure out ways to make that more efficient. If that was the conversation, how can we make our healthcare system more efficient? We would be having exciting, dynamic conversations about that right now. And there’s so many ideas that people have for how to do that. We would have to be willing to curb corporate power.
We would have to be willing to really take a look at what it would mean to take care of people from you know the very beginning to the very end of life. But that’s the conversation we should be having right now because if our health care system was more efficient we’d be saving more money and we’d be getting better outcomes and everybody would be happier with it. So let’s have that conversation instead of this absurd one about how can we starve health care for poor people and people with disabilities and the poor.
and the elderly. None of that makes any sense at all. And to think they were finding efficiencies by firing everybody and then being forced to hire them back with no consideration for what they actually do. This is what happens when you take someone who runs corporations like Twitter and you think they can run the government. are not the same thing. These aren’t the same thing at all. And you know hear people sometimes say we need more business people in government. and business are not equivalent. we have different motives, have different mission statements, have different, everything about it is totally different. But that’s what happens in a culture that’s so in love with capitalism where people think that businessmen are the smartest people in the world. I’m like, okay, maybe some of them are smart.in their field, but that doesn’t mean that it translates.
And so, you we need people who run non-profits. Non-profits are totally different than businesses. We need those people who understand budgets, but who also understand what does it mean to have a mission statement and how do you live that out, you know? And so, these are complex things. I’m not trying to act like these are simple, but it’s because they’re complex that we have to take them seriously and we have to serious-minded people running them.
Fred
You have come to appreciate, I’m sure, the dedicated people working in federal service and state service who have made their careers into serving people and trying to make government work, which can be frustrating sometimes, it can be bureaucratic, it can be complicated, but it’s also critical for our quality of life. There are so many public servants who, it’s not the paycheck.
It’s not the glory, it’s the commitment to making things work.
Angela
And I think we’re living in this really interesting time, of course, maybe every time is interesting, but this is our moment, where there’s kind of a war on public schools and teaching, there’s a war on public servants. But I think…we’re also going to see in this moment in particular a deeper awareness of how critical they are. When you start to cut the park service, then you start to realize, wait a minute. Right, this touches everybody. Yeah, or the Forest Service. And so I’m hoping that we can have a sort of rise in commitment to public service in this moment and help people recognize
Yeah, it doesn’t pay well, but guess what? That’s overrated. You want to live a life of purpose and meaning? Dedicate yourself to your community. this is what public teachers have been doing their whole careers. This is what librarians have been doing their whole careers. So many people. And so I would just encourage people right now, this is the time to double down.
Fred Clark (45:55.64)
Well last week we had on the show Gus Smith, formerly the head ranger of the Washburn district on the show, on the Chequamegon Nicolet. Former Northland student and then faculty member. right, that’s right. Colleague of yours and Julie Van Steppe and formerly with the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and they both talked about just what we’re beginning to see already with these impacts and as you said it’s chaotic and it’s also changing rapidly. everyone’s going to be following intently how that plays out.
So before we wrap up, just tell us a little bit about your office and how people here in the 73rd can reach you and learn more. And when people need support from you, who do they get in touch with?
Angela,
Yes, so my office, it’s me and my staffer, Lucio De Los Santos, and I made a great hire. He’s amazing. If you ever need anything at all, whether it’s you want to share your view on a piece of legislation or an issue, or you’re having some trouble with a state agency. So that’s one of the things I’ve been so excited about. One small example is there’s this wonderful nonprofit that runs out of Bayfield that runs a camp. It’s called Camp Benise. And it’s a camp for goldstars families – so people who’ve lost their service member in combat. And they needed help getting a license for raffling. that’s one of their big fundraisers. And they were just hitting roadblocks and by contacting my office, we were able to get that license through.
And it’s a small thing, but it’s so thrilling to me to help people who are having struggles with a state agency. my office is able to just pick up the phone, as you know, I’m sure you did this all the time too when you were a rep. I can pick up the phone and get the DNR or the Department of Revenue on the line whereas a typical constituent often cannot. And so if you are having any trouble at all, also with federal agencies, if you’re having trouble with unemployment or disability claims, we can help get federal agencies on the line faster than you probably could on your own.
Please be in touch with us and you can contact me via email. Just Google my name in Wisconsin state legislature and you’ll find all the contact info, phone number, email, either one works and be in touch if there’s anything we can ever do to help.
Fred
Wonderful and we’ll put those contacts in the show notes when this gets posted too. Perfect. But I’m sure that Lucio, it’s been a good part of each day talking to the people you represent, helping them with those kind of issues.
Angela
Yep, he does.
Fred
Well Angela, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us. Here on March 23rd? Did I get the date right? I have no idea. Okay, I don’t either. It’s Monday though! You’re at home for a week finally after a few weeks down in Madison?
Angela
I think I’m here for two weeks and maybe even more. We’ll see what happens with my committees. Wonderful. Well, we hope to have you back here regularly to give us an update on what’s going on in the Capitol. I’d love it.
Fred
Thanks so much. I’m Fred Clark and for our listeners on behalf of everyone at WVCB, thank you for being with us for Pulse of the Bay, and special Thanks to our producer Corey Scribner and the many other volunteers working hard to establish this small but mighty community resource WVCB FM.
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Corey James Scribner
