Community | March 04, 2011 | 39 comments

LATIMES: Wisconsin governor's agenda goes far beyond limiting unions

source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-wisconsin-budget-20110304,0,238145.story

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PoliticalAmazon
The LATimes ran a nice summary of some of the other Stupid Governor Tricks Governor Walker has pulled since he's been in office.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-wisconsin-budget-20110304,0...

March 4, 2011 (Print Edition)

LATIMES: Wisconsin governor's agenda goes far beyond limiting unions

Reporting from Madison, Wis. —
Even before new Republican Gov. Scott Walker set off a national firestorm by proposing to strip most Wisconsin government workers of their collective bargaining rights, he had hit the ground running.

He pushed $117 million in business tax cuts through the GOP-run statehouse, aggravating the state's deficit in hopes of creating jobs. Then he got the Legislature to agree to a measure requiring a two-thirds majority to raise taxes in the future, leaving fewer options to close the shortfall.

This week, he proposed a two-year budget to close the projected $3.6-billion deficit. It included big cuts in state aid to local governments — and would bar those cities and counties from raising property taxes to avoid having to make their own reductions.

Most notably, Walker used a small gap in the current fiscal year to fast-track a bill that would give his administration unprecedented powers — not only to weaken public sector unions, but to appoint dozens of powerful new bureaucrats and to determine who gets to stay in the state's Medicaid program.

Democrats contend that Walker seems to be more interested in changing Wisconsin's political dynamics than in financial stewardship. Even outside observers are starting to agree.

"What you've got is a governor who's come in with a great appetite for achieving his ends," said Norman J. Ornstein, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "This is far more about power than it is about money."

Walker's office did not respond to requests for an interview, but the governor's supporters said Wisconsin voters overwhelmingly backed him and his party in November when they ran on a platform of cutting spending and helping businesses create jobs.

"We're doing what we said we're going to do," said Scott Fitzgerald, majority leader in the state Senate.

Even before the current impasse, Walker turned heads with his hard-charging approach.

"I've been here 19 years and I don't remember any other governor coming in with as ambitious, or effective, a first month," said Charles Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Walker's campaign motto was "Wisconsin Is Open for Business," and he had promised to lure 250,000 jobs to the state. He quickly pushed through a package of tax cuts for businesses that hired new workers, and he also signed a law protecting businesses from liability in lawsuits. The only business group he battled with was the Democratic-leaning green energy industry, when he proposed increasing regulations on the placement of wind farms.

Like many states, Wisconsin is on a two-year fiscal cycle. But the state's Legislative Fiscal Bureau projected a slight shortfall in the current year, which enabled Walker to propose an emergency measure known as a budget repair bill.

Walker's proposal contains a host of provisions that don't deal directly with this year's shortfall. The most controversial one is the collective bargaining measure. Unions have agreed to benefit and pension concessions to help balance the budget. But Walker said they must be stripped of bargaining rights to allow local governments to survive the deep cuts in money the state passes along to them.

Because of his proposed limit on tax increases, Walker will essentially force those governments to make the cuts he envisions, said Andrew Reschovsky, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "I think he really believes that economic growth decisions by businesses and entrepreneurs are made on tax levels and not education and public services," Reschovsky said.

The most consequential provision would allow Walker's administration to determine eligibility for the state's Medicaid program, BadgerCare. Previously, any changes would have to go through the Legislature. Under the bill, the governor has to consult only with the Senate's budget committee.

"We're very worried that tens of thousands of people could lose eligibility," said Jon Peacock of the Wisconsin Budget Project, which advocates for social service programs. "There's a pattern of consolidation of a whole lot of authority in the executive branch and a significant reduction in the public's ability to be involved in significant policy decisions."

Walker has said that one of his priorities is making tough, long-term decisions now to avoid a future budget crisis.

Ornstein said Walker might have limited time to advance his program.

"The longer this goes on and we hear more stories about how this is a power grab … it gets more difficult for him," Ornstein said. "These opportunities don't come along that often, and if you blink, it makes it harder to achieve the next time around."
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    Wisconsin,  Unions,  governor,  walker
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39 comments // LATIMES: Wisconsin governor's agenda goes far beyond limiting unions

  • Leen61
    • +2
      Leen61  

    • The cat is long out of the bag here in WI. Walker wants dictator like power and he's stopping at nothing to achieve it. His biggest problem--he wanted it all immediately instead of incremetnally. His agenda became waay to obvious. It is backfiring on him BIG TIME! This BS coming out of Fitzgerald is your typical GOP mandate CRAP. There was no mandate to go this far and now that the people are saying just that, they refuse to back off. Who's listening to the people? Not these thugs. This GOP machine has awakened the true populist nature of this state and they are realizing the Reps are not the answer.

      Thanks for posting this PoliticalAmazon. Well done! This article gives a thorough explanation as to what's going on here in WI. +^d!

    • 1 year ago
  • John_McCauley
    • +2
      John_McCauley  

    • Sounds like Rick in Michigan who is trying to bankrupt schools so he can create debt managers and throughout contracts next year. But the rest is more of the same true believers jamming their social views down our throats and buying elections. Viva Rick!!!!

    • 1 year ago
  • extracrazykiwi2008
  • SoCalFramer
    • +1
      SoCalFramer  

    • Buried in the bill is a provision to arrest farmers that refer to governor Walker as the state cow pie. He also has the power to arrest cows that continue to make statues of him in the fields where they live.

      Hey is that a cow pie? No thats Governor Walker but they sure do look alike.

    • 1 year ago
  • PoliticalAmazon
  • kvb1
    • +3
      kvb1  

    • Starve the government and we can prove that government does not work. We want ot create jobs, so the first thing we do is cut taxes, blame the budget deficit on the unions and make the middle class suffer. RIPublican strategy is all about despotism and subjugation.

    • 1 year ago
  • dinm76
  • CitizenHill
    • -8
      CitizenHill  

    • I've yet to see a rational alternate plan that even remotely begins to address curbing the runaway public pension expenditures.
      So what the heck, let's kick that can down the road even further - - let's compound the inability to ever balance the budget, but don't dare fu** with the union/govt extortion plan.

    • 1 year ago
  • Mark701
    • +5
      Mark701  
    • CitizenHill:

      News Flash genius, the union pension fund in Wisconsin and in most other places is funded by the union members themselves, not tax dollars. I am a state employee (not in Wisconsin) and I have $145/week withdrawn from my salary for my retirement. That money is taken by the unions and invested to ensure there's enough funds to pay for retirement. Cost to the taxpayer= $0. If your only "news" source is FOX "News" you wouldn't know that.

    • 1 year ago
  • hanzdogy
    • 0
      hanzdogy  
    • Mark701:

      You are totally right. There has been an obvious attempt to obfuscate where the unions get their retirement funding from. I would also say that the attempt was fairly successful.

    • 1 year ago
  • CitizenHill
  • ahiguy
    • 0
      ahiguy  
    • Mark701:

      Every dime a public service employee earns come from the pocket of the taxpayer . . . Every dime paid out of the salary of a public service employee to "public" unions in "dues" for funding of "public" pensions therefore comes out of the pocket of the taxpayer.

    • 1 year ago
  • Leen61
  • PoliticalAmazon
    • 0
      PoliticalAmazon  
    • CitizenHill:

      The "runaway public pensions" meme is a strawman created by the servants of the elites--aka the Koch brothers--to help frame a target for the real problem with our budgets:

      1. The rich not paying the same percentage the rest of us pay.

      2. Taxpayer-funded incentives for corporations to send the jobs created here in America to other countries, where they can profit from the investment we made in creating the jobs.

      3. Allowing tax shelters for corporations to shield the elites from paying their fair share of taxes.

      4. Our representatives in Washington, D.C. prioritizing the creation of phony wars--which the taxpayers pay to fund and conduct--ahead of the Feds fulfilling their role as protectors of our international border with Mexico, shifting the burden to the states, who not only do not have the rights to do it, but certainly don't have the funding and resources to do it.

      5. Presidents who are wiling to slaughter our soldiers/troops, and bankrupt our country, in order to fraudulently invade and occupy another country, so that American corporations can loot that country's natural resources.

      6. Taxpayer-funded free-money "bail-outs" to the frauds on Wall Street, allowing the executives to continue to receive $millions to $billions in "performance bonuses."

      "Runaway pensions" is not only a fraudulent meme, it targets as scapegoats those working in public organizations and agencies.

      For your information, to make the most impact with funding for conservation (of all kinds, including State- and Federal-mandated), one usually has to work for a public organization/agency which has the power to create public ordinances, set regulations, etc. Those who choose to work for public organizations/agencies are usually forced to forgo a more lucrative salary from the private sector, with the payoff being a (hopefully) secure pension and benefit package.

      If you want to cut public-employee pensions, then compensate the employees by going back to when they were hired and compensate them for the amount of money they would have made if they had been working in the private sector. That would include all the interest they would have accumulated in their pension plans if they had invested their pensions themselves.

      To do otherwise would be to pull a two-bit bait-and-switch scam on public workers and, thanks, but we already have a bait-and-switch president, who promises one thing and then welches when it comes time for the payout. We don't need another bait-and-switch scan pulled on the American people who work as public servants.

    • 1 year ago
  • hombre76
    • +1
      hombre76  
    • CitizenHill:

      Heres your god damn plan ass, tax those rich fucks and their corporations that keep ripping off your communities and give nothing back. All these fucking corporate loving house nigers need to stop bitching about how hard it is for the multi billionares they love so much and figure out which team has their stinking back in the real world. All i hear from the right is how the working people need to tighten their belts so we can balance our budget while they hand out billion dollar tax breaks for the top 1% of the country, so they can what? stock more in their off shore bank accounts? this shit will not stand! the unions broke you and your corporate asses many time throughout history and we will do it again and your mercenary police forces wont stop us this time any more than they did the last. keep digging your fucking grave by pissing off the american worker, soon you'll be reaping what you fucking sow.

    • 1 year ago
  • hombre76
    • +1
      hombre76  
    • ahiguy:

      oh you mean to say your pissed that they get paid fot rendering a service, an essencial service at that. well shit now i see why your pissed off they have the gall to think they have a right to demand a livable wage and retirement for their years of sevice to the public. how fucking dare they! dont they know there place those fucking serfs?! the tax payer wants slaves doing their state and government work and their hard earned taxes going to bennifit the rich so they can beneficently rule us all and make things right again in the world. I know you fucking right wingers have starved a whole generation of any decent education but you must be smoking crack laced with stupid if you think for a moment that the working men and women of this country or for that matter any other are going to put up with let alone sympathize with your agenda is so fucking moronic as to be pathetic if it were not so damn evil.

    • 1 year ago
  • CitizenHill
  • ahiguy
  • Mark701
    • 0
      Mark701  
    • ahiguy:

      Oh I get it. You don't like the fact that taxes are used to pay my salary. Fine, when you agree not to drive on federal or state funded roads, refuse police and fire protection, military protection, federal law enforcement protection, consumer and environmental protection, as well as a thousand other things YOU use that are paid for by MY taxes, then I'll quit my job. Oh and the way, I pay state taxes too, so in a sense I'm also paying a portion of my own salary. Do you?

    • 1 year ago
  • hombre76
  • ahiguy
    • 0
      ahiguy  
    • hombre76:

      Take it as you want... as I see it, you've got it ass-backwards.
      It is the taxpayers who've become the serfs of the govt.
      Civil service generates no revenues, but it's ever increasing demands of pensions and benefits and salary increases suck the very economic life blood out of the private sector.
      30 million citizens laid off and out of work, but no pain in the civil service sector... it is the pig at the trough demanding the taxpayer to feed it more slop.

    • 1 year ago
  • hombre76
    • 0
      hombre76  
    • ahiguy:

      yes 30 million laid off by the coruption and inepptitude of your precious corporations and the republicans you vote for padding their pockets all the way to their overseas bank accounts. your pillosophy of global economics and leadership is a fraud and the world and the american worker, the real reason there is wealth in this nation and the world can see through your vail of greed plainly now. your system will crumble as its pillars of salt and sand break under the wieght of truth.

    • 1 year ago
  • ahiguy
  • hombre76
  • ahiguy
  • PeteLeS33
  • PoliticalAmazon
  • PeteLeS33
  • The_Wanderer_KS
  • chew_chew
  • nanac
  • extracrazykiwi2008
  • WakeUpPeople
  • PoliticalAmazon
    • +10
      PoliticalAmazon  
    • WakeUpPeople:

      Getting us involved in Iraq based on lies wasn't just "Bush's agenda," either. It was also the agenda of Gates, Cheney, and military contractors.

      I think the front man, the one using their power to effect the deed, is the most culpable....but I'm sure that can be debated.

    • 1 year ago
  • WakeUpPeople
  • ZiggyStrange
  • BenjaminDover
  • kennymotown
  • extracrazykiwi2008
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