Congressman Joe Walsh joined us for an afternoon discussion on the upcoming election. Joe has run spirited campaigns for elected office twice, first as a Republican candidate for the United States Congress in 1996 and then as a Republican candidate for the Illinois State House in 1998 so he speaks about his own experiences and predictions for the 2012 elections.
Joe Walsh has dedicated his professional life to service and advocacy. He has advocated on behalf of a wide range of public policy issues and causes, most notably advancing market-based solutions to education reform and urban poverty.
Joe began his career with Jobs For Youth, working in inner-city Chicago teaching high school dropouts basic academic and job skills; he worked on state and local public policy issues with the Heartland Institute, a free market think tank; he ran the Daniel Murphy Scholarship Fund, a Chicago-based privately funded school voucher program which gives high school scholarships to low-income Chicago eighth graders; he helped launch the Legislative Education Action Drive and Americans for Limited Government, national organizations working to get fiscally conservative state legislators elected in targeted states and advance the causes of limited government; he raised funds for and helped advance the cause of school choice for two of the nation’s leading school choice organizations, the American Education Reform Council and the Milton & Rose Friedman Foundation; and he continues to build support for an international charity which uses education and micro-enterprise to deliver Nicaraguan children from poverty, the Fabretto Children’s Foundation.
