Two Years after the Foxconn Contract Was Signed
and Voters Still Have a Sour Taste in Their Mouths
(MADISON)—Today, Senator Tim Carpenter issued the following statement regarding the second anniversary of Governor Walker and Terry Gou’s signing of the Foxconn Contract:
“Two years ago on November 10th, then-Governor Scott Walker and Terry Gou signed the Foxconn Contract, the biggest development deal in state history. It also had the potential to be the largest tax break awarded to a foreign company in American History.
“Today, it seems like that was all a dream of a Republican Party that thought they had another 3 term governor. When the deal was passed in the legislature, it seemed crystal clear that the jobs created and investments promised would be a feather in Scott Walker’s cap. By the time that the election actually came around in November 2018, the outlook had changed. The writing was on the wall that some of the plans might not pan out.
“In January of 2019, Foxconn’s job reporting showed that they had created 178 full-time Wisconsin employees in 2018: 31% short of their minimum for that year. And recently, we learned that the plans for the ‘innovation centers’ that Foxconn has acquired in Milwaukee, Green Bay, Eau Claire, Racine, and Madison are stalled. The company has told local officials in those cities that it is focusing its energy on the manufacturing campus in Mount Pleasant, where the original plan to build a 22 million square foot plant has been reduced to a less than 1 million square foot plant.
“Despite a generous package of tax breaks, agreed upon by Scott Walker and Terry Gou with practically no oversight exercised by the majority in the State Legislature, Foxconn still seems to be struggling after two years. I will be interested to see their reporting next year for their 2019 performance. Something tells me that Robin Vos won’t be following his own advice from when Republicans killed the high-speed rail line in 2012:
“I do not believe that it is my responsibility to just turn the blind eye and say because someone before me signed a sweetheart deal for whatever political reason they chose to do it, it’s not my job to fulfill a bad contract to do something that is a bad decision for the state.”
“The critics of the deal tried explaining as much to Governor Walker back in 2017 when the bill was coming through the legislature. He told us we could, ‘go suck lemons.’”
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