President Obama expected to visit Wisconsin next week

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President Obama is expected to visit Wisconsin a week from tomorrow to raise campaign money and hold a roundtable discussion. The campaign has not confirmed it, but several media reports say the event will take place at the Milwaukee Theatre on September 22nd. Invitations say donors would pay 250-dollars for a general reception, five-thousand for a photo with the president at a V-I-P reception, and 25-thousand dollars to attend Obama’s roundtable. Ben Sparks of Republican Mitt Romney’s Wisconsin campaign slammed the president for coming to Wisconsin just to raise money. Obama has not visited the Badger State since last February, when he toured Milwaukee’s Master Lock plant.

Yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden told about three-thousand supporters at U-W Eau Claire that the nation’s top objective should be to become the most educated nation in the world. Biden said that both he and President Obama would not be where they are in life, had they not received financial aid for college. And Biden talked about the administration’s plan for the U-S to have the highest percentage of college graduates of any nation in the world by 2020. Before leaving Eau Claire, the vice president spent a half-hour for lunch at Eau Claire’s Acoustic Café.

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Wisconsin’s representatives helped the U-S House avert a federal government shutdown on October first. Republicans Jim Sensenbrenner and Tom Petri were the only Wisconsin members to vote no yesterday, when the House voted 329-to-91 in favor of a six-month stop-gap spending package. Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan of Janesville interrupted his campaigning to vote in favor of the bill – even though it spends 19-billion dollars more than the massive cuts he proposed earlier this year. The measure allows an across-the-board increase of six-tenths-of-one percent, in accordance with a budget deal from last summer. Wausau area Republican Sean Duffy said the package is far from perfect – and he said it’s quote, “irresponsible to force a government shutdown and play games with our markets.” The Senate is expected to approve the stop-gap bill next week. And that will set stage for much tougher decisions Congress will have to make when it returns after Election Day. They’ll have to deal with over 100-billion dollars in automatic spending cuts, as a punishment for the failure of last year’s “super-committee” to reach a compromise on long-term budget deal. At the same time, the Bush-era tax cuts are due to expire at the end of the year – bringing the prospect of a tax hike for most Americans.

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