By M.D. Kittle MacIver News Service | July 27, 2017

[Madison, Wis...] There's been a lot of hoopla about Foxconn Technology Group's White House announcement Wednesday that it plans to build a massive factory in southeast Wisconsin. And there should be.

But Foxconn's proposed $10 billion development and the tens of thousands of jobs it is eventually expected to spur does not happen without three things:

- Conservative reforms over the past 6 1/2 years
- Wisconsin Republicans' very prominent seats at the national political table
- President Donald Trump's passionate pursuit to bring manufacturing jobs back to America, and his keen interest in vacant Kenosha land where a Chrysler/American Motors plant once stood.

Of course, $3 billion in taxpayer-funded incentives doesn't hurt, either.

There's been a lot of political bow-taking in the past day. Some deserve to. Some don't.

Gov. Scott Walker and his fellow Republicans running the state Legislature truly have opened Wisconsin for business since sweeping into power in 2011. They promised and delivered on billions of dollars in tax relief, robust regulatory reform, and a pledge to restore power to taxpayers. Those reforms opened the eyes to business, that the Badger State is a place to expand and locate - not flee, as Illinois firms have been doing amid mounting state debt and record tax hikes.

"We have created this environment where companies are looking to Wisconsin," state Sen. Leah Vukmir, (R-Brookfield) told MacIver News Service Wednesday on the Vicki McKenna Show (Newstalk 1130 WISN).

Vukmir recalls the hostile days of Wisconsin's Act 10 debate, when big labor and their friends on the left crammed the Capitol to disrupt Walker's state collective bargaining reform initiative that has saved taxpayers billions and signaled to the world that reformers of big government meant business. Act 10 nearly cost Walker and several conservative senators their jobs. Their political survival emboldened conservative lawmakers across the country, convincing them that they could successfully challenge the bureaucracy status quo.

"I remember sitting in that room off the Senate chambers, just the Republican senators in our caucus listening to the vuvuzelas and the chanting and on and on and on," Vukmir said. "There was so much pressure for us not to make the right decision. I remember standing up and talking to my colleagues and saying, 'We cannot back down. If we do, no other state will consider doing the reforms we are trying to do here.'"  READ it HERE