State vs. Federal Exchange: "By nature, my gut instinct tells me if I've got a choice between the federal government and me running it, I want to run it. States are always better at doing things than the federal government. The problem is I believe the state exchanges are 'state' in name only. And what I mean by that is the only true flexibility from any sort of substantive standpoint is I can go from having a handful of people running it to hundreds of people running it. The federal government will give you that flexibility. But in terms of what I cover, how I cover it, what's involved with it, all of those things are ultimately restricted to the guidelines of the federal government. There is no flexibility for a state to say, 'We want to do something unique to Wisconsin." (Kenosha News)

Medical Assistance/BadgerCare 

[Last budget] We put over $1.2 billion, more money than any governor in state history, more money than just about any governor per capita in the country. There'll have to be more in. It won't be that amount. The question is how much. What I'd like to see is us do more is have Medicaid be a system that, other than for the truly permanently needy - for seniors, for people with developmental or physical disabilities who are going to continue to need our assistance - but for others who have been part of our Medicaid-related programs, we'd like to continue to have reforms that, as the economy improves, as people start to move to the workplace, that we're putting in incentives for people to shift over to the private sector. There are a lot of people on BadgerCare and things like that right now who are employed in the private sector. We'd like those people to ultimately get their health insurance from their employer and not through BadgerCare, not because we kicked them off but because we make it easier for them to make that transition. That just means there are more resources available for people who are truly needy.  (Appleton Post Crescent) 

Off-Reservation Casino Expansion:

Walker on Friday also said he'd set an extremely high bar for approving a casino for the Menominee tribe in Kenosha. The tribe already has a small casino on its reservation northwest of Green Bay.

All proposals for off-reservation casinos in the state must be approved first by the federal Department of the Interior and then Walker, who said his criteria would be similar to those laid out in a May letter from his administration to an Interior Department official.

First, Walker said a proposed casino would need to have the support of the local community - something Kenosha arguably has demonstrated in past voter referendums.

"Second, I've got to have some consensus among the sovereign (tribal) nations, which is probably the most difficult," Walker said.   

The third factor, Walker said, would be whether a new casino could be squared with 1993 advisory referendums in which voters supported the forms of gambling existing at the time but strongly opposed expansions of gambling.

"How do you honor that? Does that mean closing an operation on the Menominee (reservation)? We haven't really had a real measure of where the public is on that," Walker said.  Closing the casino in Keshena would keep the number of gambling establishments the same but would replace a small operation with a much larger one.  

(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Industrial Sand Mining:

Keeping Tuition Affordable at UW System:

Gov. Scott Walker said he's considering several options to keep tuition affordable in the University of Wisconsin System.  The options include freezing tuition, capping the size of tuition hikes and raising state aid.  (La Crosse Tribune)