Government is at its best when it effectively responds to people's everyday needs, reflecting the value that people place on health, education, economic security and safety. In spite of the bad rap government has been getting lately, an examination of attitudes about government by Demos, a private, nonprofit organization devoted to improving public discourse, shows that citizens believe government must and does play an important role in advancing common interests, working on behalf of the public good, and creating a vision for the future. Policymakers can best fulfill that belief by working together, across party lines, on issues that most of us care about.

Wisconsin is well within reach of covering all kids with health insurance. Roughly 6 to 7 percent of kids are currently uninsured. Governor Doyle's plan to extend the highly cost-effective BadgerCare Plus program to cover all children in the state makes good sense for both kids and taxpayers.

Our educational achievement gap is one of the worst in the nation. That's the bad news. The good news is that we know what to do about it. High quality early education and after-school programs are proven, effective tools that research has shown help children succeed academically, and are particularly effective at helping kids of color, who are more likely to be low-income and at risk for low achievement.

Families lost economic ground in the past five years, and with that more children slid into poverty and deep poverty. There is a clear and compelling correlation between an adult's earnings and educational achievement: the more education you have, the more you earn. Let's find ways of making it possible for parents who are struggling economically to get more education. Our employers need workers with higher skills, and our families need jobs with higher incomes.

Our prisons are overcrowded, yet we continue to put 17-year-olds in adult jails and prisons in spite of the evidence that juvenile justice interventions do a far better job of reducing the risk of recidivism and helping them succeed as adults. It's not rocket science...it's brain science that tells us that teenagers are different from adults, and that our treatment of them therefore needs to be smarter and more effective.

In other words, don't be penny wise and pound foolish by cutting taxes that help only a small percentage of the population, while leaving insufficient revenues for services that help the rest of us. It's true that property taxes take a big bite out of homeowners' pocketbooks, but we should look at targeted property tax relief, like increasing the Homestead Tax Credit, which benefits residents with lower incomes. We should also think about how our economy has changed, shifting from a goods-producing economy to a service-producing economy, and update our tax system accordingly in order to take advantage of the emerging service sector's growth.