MILWAUKEE– Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos came onto WTMJ N.O.W. to talk about everything from diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); budget surplus; and more, including the legalization of marijuana in Wisconsin.
“I am a dead-set opponent of recreational marijuana,” Vos said. “Adding more drugs to our society has no positive benefit.”
Vos and other Republicans are in favor of medicinal marijuana, but they do not want the legalization of medicinal to lead to recreational use.
“In almost every other state, they do medicinal first. People make money off of that, and they spend it all lobbying to get recreational. Then we end up with Michigan, Illinois, or Minnesota,” he said.
Even though he disagrees with Democrats’ wanting recreational marijuana, he still wants their bipartisan support.
“Certain things, I get it. There’s just a bright divide in our society, and you’re probably never going to find a consensus. But you can sure try, and that’s what my hope is on things like this.”
Vos said standardized tests should be put back into the college application process because too much of the process relies on DEI and essays.
“It’s based on how well you write an essay to someone you’ve never met or will meet thinks you’ve done. And it’s not on the writing quality, sometimes it’s on what you choose to write on,” he said.
This was one of the ideas that led to Republicans making a bill to limit DEI, and now that bill has been passed by the UW Board of Regents.
“Put everybody in the pool and let the best person rise. That’s what we want,” Vos said. “It somehow changed in the DEI mindset to say: let’s put all the African Americans or all Hispanics or all the Whtie people in a bucket and pick from that. That’s not the way it should be, it should be a melting pot.”
The bill will also have the top 5% of Wisconsin graduates automatically admitted to UW-Madison and the top 10% into all other UW schools.
Wisconsin Republicans are drafting a bill to use part of the $4,000,000,000 budget surplus to go towards people on social security. Vos said the first $100,000 of people’s retirement money would be tax-free.
“You might wanna go to Florida for five months instead of six months and a day so you can keep your citizenship and your tax-paying ability in Wisconsin. It’s good for us. It’s good for people to see their grandkids,” he said.
The bill would use about $1,000,000,000 dollars of the surplus, and Vos says they are hopeful to get bipartisan support from Gov. Evers in 2024.
Vos, personally, is an opponent of abortion, but he knows abortion isn’t an all-or-nothing type of issue.
In July, the Wisconsin Assembly approved the use of over-the-counter birth control pills, and Assembly Speaker Vos agreed with the decision.
“I want widely available birth control so that hopefully nobody needs to have an abortion,” he said. “Almost all the Republicans in the assembly voted for it.”
He took his stance a step further by saying there needs to be a compromise between Democrats and Republicans on this issue, so they can finally leave this issue alone.
“I think we do Ron Johnson’s idea and put 12 or 14 weeks on the ballot. Let the people say this is what we want to do, and hopefully, the politicians will let it rest for a while,” he said.
