After months of doing nothing about the pandemic, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos says he’s ready to work with the governor.
But during a Tuesday press conference, reporters pressed Vos for specifics. “You don’t have a bill. You just have ideas you want to talk about after 8 months. How can you say ‘we’ve been working on this all along’ if we haven’t got anything to show for it,” Vos was asked.
“Oh we do,” Vos said. “We have those exact ideas, but the whole point is as we have gone through the summer the Democrats have spent tens of millions of dollars lying about our record, saying we didn’t care about COVID, and that of course is not true.”
Governor Tony Evers has proposed legislation which includes a potential ban on evictions, requiring health plans to cover COVID-related testing and treatment, and to continue waiving the waiting period for unemployment insurance.
Evers’ office said he forwarded those proposals to Republican leadership, and had not heard back prior to Vos’ press conference.
Vos offered little in the way proposals beyond continued support for National Guard deployments at testing sites, and a need for more testing and tracing.
“We do not have bill language drafted. We do not have specific provisions that we’re offering like he does,” Vos said. “But I do think it’s important that as he has news conferences two and three times a week – and he should – that Assembly Republicans also have the chance to talk about things that we are for, and the things that we want to do, which is why we’re here today.”
His office released a statement Tuesday afternoon.
None of this may matter, as Senate President Chris Kapenga told the Journal Sentinel that he’s “not real keen,” on Evers’ proposals, which would cost about $541 million.
On Tuesday, the state reported new records for coronavirus-related deaths and hospitalizations.
Vos said most people in the state don’t care about partisan fights. “They want us to say ‘don’t focus on who’s fighting with who, don’t focus on who’s going to meet, what time where. Nobody cares. What they want is they want us to find answers where you can actually move the ball forward, and be able to things that can actually help those that are dealing with the coronavirus.”