Accesibilidad
Accesibilidad
The state government is not working for us. The economy is rigged by billionaires and huge corporations.
Republicans have controlled the legislature for 16 years. They have made it harder and harder for working families to make it as the costs of housing, healthcare, utilities, and childcare soar. To get Wisconsin back on track, we need Democrats to break the gridlock in Madison and to clean house. But, just getting a Democratic majority is not enough. It is not the time to tinker around the edges. Wisconsin needs real, bold change, and a representative who will fight for it.
As a candidate and as a member of the Assembly, I will be open and candid about my stands on the issues that face Wisconsin. I will not say one thing in the district and do another in Madison. I will take this on as a full-time job; I’ll work as hard for you as you do for your families.
I hope that the following will help you to know exactly what you’re getting when you vote for me, and I hope other candidates will be equally clear, so you can make a wise decision.
I also welcome feedback. I want to learn from the experience, expertise, and perspectives of people in the 21st district, and people most impacted by state policies. I will always listen respectfully, and I will learn as best I can. Contact me at any time at hello@davidliners.com.
FULL AND APPROPRIATE FUNDING FOR OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Wisconsin has long had great public schools. We still do, despite the Republican refusal to fund them appropriately. That is because of heroic efforts by teachers and staff who work with our kids and grandkids daily. And, it is because local communities have stepped up where the state government has failed.
We need to insist that the state pay 2/3 of the cost for public education as the State Constitution requires, as well as 90% of the cost for Special Needs programming. For decades, the state has failed to meet its legal obligation and has even failed to keep up with inflation. The biggest gap has been in support for programs for kids with special needs. We cannot wait to fix that.
We need to change the way we pay for public education. We have become far too dependent on property taxes to pay for our schools. In recent decades, Wisconsin has given too many tax breaks to the highest-income residents and to corporations. As a result, the state has not met its obligations to our schools and students. The property taxpayer has become the last line of defense. We need to turn that around. Wealthy Wisconsinites and large corporations need to pay their share, so we can fully fund our schools and reduce property taxes in the process. We can start by freezing property taxes and using the state’s $4 billion surplus to fund our public schools.
MORATORIUM ON DATA CENTERS
Wisconsin needs to declare a moratorium on data center construction. Hard-working Wisconsin families are already paying the highest energy costs in the Midwest. We should not be asked to subsidize the massive energy needs of Silicon Valley corporations and the billionaires who run them. The false rush to build data centers is resulting in the expansion of fossil fuel-burning power plants to supply them with cheap electricity, causing homeowners’ utility bills to skyrocket even more. Utility bill payers will be paying the costs for new power plants long after the data centers have been abandoned for the next big thing.
Wisconsin needs a plan before we allow any more hyperscale data centers. We need a plan that is transparent and that considers all of the impacts on the environment, on health, on utility prices, and the well-being of Wisconsinites for the next 40 years.
Finally, we need to ensure that large-scale projects like data centers are never allowed to pay less for electricity than residential customers.
We need a moratorium on the construction of data centers now to protect our future.
CLIMATE AND CLEAN ENERGY
Climate change is a threat to our Wisconsin way of life. It is already responsible for extreme weather events that are harming our farmers and damaging homes and property. It is causing residential insurance rates to skyrocket. The recent spike in oil prices that has caused gasoline and fertilizer prices to rapidly increase is making life less affordable for Wisconsin families. We need to reject our addiction to fossil fuels. Addressing climate change must be a top priority. We can start by refusing to build new fossil fuel-burning power plants and by investing in solar and wind power, which are cheaper and healthier. We need to encourage the use of rooftop solar energy and more.
As your representative, I will work to ensure that the State pursues Wisconsin’s 2030 emissions goals and work to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
If we don’t do something about global warming, not much else is likely to matter very much! We must meet Wisconsin’s 2030 emissions goals and must achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. These need to be top priorities, not things we will do if they are convenient.
We need to immediately stop building any new fossil fuel-burning power plants. We need to invest in solar and wind power, which is cheaper and healthier. We need to encourage community and rooftop solar energy, and more.
GET SMART ABOUT COMMUNITY SAFETY
We all want to be safe. We have a right to be able to drive without fearing for our lives, and we need to be safe in our homes and on the streets. If we are serious about safety, we need to invest in the things that actually make us safer – things like mental health and addiction treatment and youth programs. The very best community safety measure is a reduction in poverty.
There will always be a need to prosecute and restrain people who are violent or out of control. But we have relied far too much on incarceration for the past 50 years, and it has not worked. Our jails and prisons are filled with people with mental health and addiction issues.
Study after study shows that people sent to community-based treatment programs work; participants have a much lower rate of future crime than people sent off to prison.
It is a scandal that more Wisconsin taxpayer dollars go to the prison system than to the University of Wisconsin system. Wisconsin can very safely reduce its prison population by more than 3,000 through common-sense measures like Treatment Alternatives and Diversions, Earned Release, and Compassionate Release for the growing number of elderly people in our prisons.
EMBRACE DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
The MAGA attack on inclusion and diversity is as Un-American as it is immoral. As our Founding Fathers wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men (and women) are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…We need to build a state where everyone, no matter their race, religion, national origin, or sexual orientation, is treated as an equally valued member. Simple human decency requires all of us to look out for those who are most vulnerable.
I believe that we are to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I believe that every person, regardless of race, gender, national origin, religion, sexual or gender identity, disability, or past history, deserves to be treated with dignity because I believe every person is created in the image of God.
IMMIGRATION
Wisconsin needs immigrants. Immigrants from Germany, Poland, Italy, and Eastern Europe played a key role in building our communities, as more recent immigrants from Russia, Mexico, Central America, Laos, Myanmar, and the Middle East continue to make us stronger. Immigrants are our neighbors, co-workers, and members of our faith communities. They work in critical Wisconsin industries, including construction, dairy, manufacturing, healthcare, and hospitality. They are entrepreneurs and small business owners. They pay taxes. We need the energy, creativity, and work ethic of our new neighbors to keep moving forward. Cultural diversity makes our state a better place.
State and local law enforcement resources should not be used to support federal mass deportation policies that have brutalized and racially profiled law-abiding immigrants and citizens alike. We need to join the many states (GOP-led and Democrat-led) that allow undocumented workers to obtain driver’s licenses. We need to allow all long-term Wisconsin residents who have graduated from Wisconsin high schools and have been admitted to a University of Wisconsin System college to pay in-state tuition rates.
DAYCARE AND EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
Child Care is too expensive for many of our hard-working families. We need quality and affordable childcare so that all children can attend a quality childcare center and their parents can go to work without worrying about their children’s safety. It is embarrassing that Wisconsin is among the states that offer the least help to working people with small children. Making sure children have a strong, healthy start in their lives is everyone’s responsibility. Working families need to be able to afford to go to work.
We need to pay a decent wage to the people who care for the most vulnerable members of our society – children, the elderly, and those who need special care. Prioritizing care for the vulnerable is a baseline requirement for a civilized society. That costs money, and it is a great investment. We can afford it, especially once we fix the tax structure in Wisconsin.
TAXES
One of the more common phrases I hear from people at their doors is, “I don’t mind paying taxes…” We all understand that we need to pay for schools and streets and community safety, and that we all have to pitch in to help those who are most in need. People often follow up that phrase with something like, “…but everybody else needs to do their part, too.”
On the whole, taxpayers in Wisconsin pay less in state and local taxes than in all but about 12 states. It certainly doesn’t feel that way to most of us, especially when our property tax bills keep going up. The problem is that not everyone is doing their share. Reduced tax rates for the wealthy and large corporations are the reason our property taxes are higher. We need to reverse that trend.
Income tax and inheritance tax are the most equitable kinds of taxation, because those with the greatest ability to pay contribute more. Yet over the past 50 years, Wisconsin has slashed the rates paid by the highest income earners. That is not fair. As Scripture says, “to whom much has been given, much will be expected.” We need to raise the rates on the very top income-earners, and we need to take the pressure off of people who pay property tax (either as property owners or as renters – rent price includes property tax).
UTILITY
We need to rein in utilities in Wisconsin. It is outrageous that we have profit-driven monopolies in our state that have very weak oversight and are guaranteed a 9.8% profit. As WE Energies and other utility monopolies rake in record profits, and as their CEO’s are paid millions, Wisconsin rate-payers are paying record utility bills. They are a major force promoting the construction of data centers. They have used their state-granted monopoly status to work against the public interest and in favor of their own profits.
Business as usual is not working with the utilities. That’s why New Jersey just froze utility price increases.
A starting point in the needed overhaul is the adoption of a 2% cap on the amount that households can be charged for utility bills. It makes a lot more sense to provide a guarantee to hard-working low-income households than it does to guarantee profits to utility shareholders. Nor can we allow utilities to build fossil-fuel-burning power plants when renewable energy is cheaper! And, we certainly cannot allow them to use their guaranteed profits to lobby against community solar projects.
BADGERCARE PUBLIC OPTIONS
One of the scandals of the 16 years of GOP control of the state legislature is that we never accepted the federal money that would have allowed for Badgercare expansion. Wisconsin Republicans, for political reasons, cost Wisconsin billions of dollars while simultaneously keeping tens of thousands of working people uninsured. They made this lose-lose decision just to avoid the name “Obamacare.”
We still need to accept the Badgercare expansion money, even though the federal Big Ugly Bill of 2025 made it less valuable with its cuts to Medicaid. We have to do more, though. We need to create a public option for Badgercare. That is, we need to allow regular people and small businesses to buy into Badgercare insurance. Badgercare expansion would not only increase the number of people insured, but it would be a tool to curb runaway healthcare costs.
Healthcare is a basic human right, not a privilege or a commodity. Eventually, we need to work toward a single-payer system that we all share. Countries with single-payer systems, by the way, have much lower overall healthcare costs than we do, with our infinitely complex and bureaucratized healthcare maze.
As a former Executive Director of a small Not-for-Profit organization, I feel this issue acutely. Our organization felt that, as a matter of justice, we should provide decent health insurance to employees. It made it very difficult to budget (different employees cost very different amounts – depending on their age, gender, family status, whether they had a spouse with good insurance…). Health insurance and employment should not be connected to each other – it doesn’t work for most people and most employers.
MINIMUM WAGE
Wisconsin’s minimum wage has not been raised in 17 years, even as inflation has increased by 52.3%. It remains a miserly $7.25 an hour. That wasn't enough for a single person to live on in 2009, much less in 2026. That’s why 30 states and Washington DC have raised their minimum wage above $7.25.
I believe if you work full-time, you should not live in poverty. We need to raise the minimum wage to $20/hour and adjust it annually for inflation. 800,000 Wisconsin workers would benefit, and it would establish a reasonable floor on wages for all Wisconsin workers.
Corporations are making record profits and receiving huge tax breaks. Meanwhile, working-class people are getting a smaller and smaller share of the economy every year. That is not a force of nature, nor is it the result of some “invisible hand” guiding the economy. It is the direct result of public policy that has rigged the labor market to serve the wealthy at the expense of hard-working people.
If you work full-time, you should be able to feed yourself, pay for a decent place to stay, have health care, and pay your utility bills. That can’t happen at $7.25 per hour. It can’t happen at $15 per hour. We absolutely need a $20/hour floor under wages in Wisconsin.
ACT 10 AND "RIGHT TO WORK"
The first order of business for a Democratic majority in the Wisconsin legislature should be the immediate repeal of Act 10 and the “Right to Work” law. These all-out attacks on organized labor that were the hallmark of the Walker Administration have been harmful to working people and to public servants.
Act 10 and the erosion of state support for public schools are two prongs of the same GOP war on public education and public employees. “Right to Work” extended that attack to all working people and their fundamental right to organize. We need a legislature that will fight for working people and the right to organize.
CANNABIS
This is a no-brainer. Of course we need to legalize cannabis. It is already everywhere; making it illegal never made people stop using it. And, it is ridiculous that people are driving to Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota to buy it legally and paying their states (not ours) the taxes.