Just last month, [Gov. Walker] and the [Wisconsin] Legislature gave away $117 million in tax breaks, mostly for businesses that expand and for private health savings accounts. That was a choice lawmakers made, and had it not been for those decisions and a few others, according to the state’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the state would have had a surplus.It really is odd that Wisconsin became ground zero, because we didn't have the budget disaster that was going on conspicuously in some of the other states. I'm really trying to understand this. Why Wisconsin? A distinctive thing about us is how good our public employees' benefits are. The cut we — I'm one of them — are being asked to take is severe. (I'm looking at a loss of more than $10,000 a year, myself.) But it's hard to complain and appear sympathetic, because we're only being asked to go from paying 0.2% of
Wisconsin is certainly not as bad off as California, Illinois, and several northeastern states that are making tough budgetary decisions without trying to eliminate union rights. Nonetheless, the union-busting movement is picking up steam, with lawmakers in Ohio, Indiana, and several other states.
So maybe we public employees in Wisconsin are a great target — a great starting place for what is a national movement by the Republicans. I'm trying to understand the party politics. Tell me if this is correct: There are vast numbers of public employees, who vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Once elected, the Democrats create more and more public jobs with greater and greater benefits, and, consequently, more voters who are even more locked into voting for Democrats. This is a cycle that approaches political graft, and the Republicans, to win, must overcome all those passionate, self-interested Democratic voters. Why wouldn't the Republicans embrace a strategy hostile to the public employees? Why wouldn't they drive a wedge between the public employees and all the other citizens in the state?
So I see 3 questions: 1. Is this what the Republicans are really doing? 2. How good a political strategy is it? and 3. Is it a good idea to reduce the political and economic power of public employees?
The 3 questions are interrelated, but they should contemplated separately... but who is capable of doing that? I'm trying to be fair, and it's possible that I'm in as good a position as anybody. I voted for Walker and support many of the things the Republicans are trying to do, but this budget plan — as I said — will cost me more than $10,000 a year.
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 224 of 224Our family has given up a lot (LOT!) of money by forgoing business deals because the other party's business (gambling) conflicted with our ethics.
I assume that public employees have ethics too. I assume those ethics include prohibitions on graft and stealing. Sometimes ethics cost.
Lisa,
OK, but I challenge you to find a single person here who genuinely supports both (a) Republicans, and (b) pork spending. I'm not saying there are no such people, but I don't think they show up at Althouse very often.
r-v,
Walker is trying to eliminate the public unions' collective bargaining privileges. FIFY. :-)
Any snow left, Freeman?
"but this budget plan — as I said — will cost me more than $10,000 a year."
And there is the rub child. It's costing your neighbors now and they are tired/unable to meet your desires...get it?
Lord help you...you may have to earn your keep...lemonade stand maybe?
I despise the politics, as well as the emotion, of envy.
That said, may I ask about Ann's working conditions? My guess is she can work from home, run errands and do hobbies with significant flexibility. Campus trips must be lovely - bucolic and cerebral atmosphere and all.
For most, a 40-hour a week job means a daily rush hour commute to a business or industrial area. One is tied to that location all day, every weekday. Weekends are a heated dash to get ordinary chores done. Perhaps by Sunday evening there can be some relaxation, but can one truly relax when the madness begins again in 12 hours?
Campus life seems aristocratic in comparison.
Althouse, it's too late, make no mistake you're going to pay, if not now in benefit givebacks, then later as a resident and property owner...my guess is both before all is said and done.
The state can't print money so there are only three solutions; all budget items take a reduction to balance the budget, new/higher taxes/fees or layoffs and facility closings; take your pick.
WI isn't in as deep as CA, but you're headed for the same cliff, it's just an matter of zeros, the results and choices will be the same; all bad.
It's more than a tad ironic that the most highly educated group of state employees were so easily duped by Bialystock and Bloom financing.
Also, a change in collective bargaining has a potential effect on higher ed. Many, if not most, graduate students are teachers getting a master's to up their pay. If merit replaces credentials, graduate schools around the country will depopulate immediately.
"I am still trying to figure out how the NYT can describe tax breaks worth $117 million as being enough to close a gap of $5.4 billion. My math says it is short by a factor of nearly 50. "
That's because you're looking at two different things. This is a fiscal year budget fix, not the Biennial budget.
Walker inherited a "balanced" fiscal year budget through June 30, 2011. Now, it was "balanced" by gimmicks, borrowing, and one time fixes, but there was no need for an "emergency" budget repair bill when he took office.
He then passed a bunch of tax breaks and requested grant money for businesses, like he said he would do while running, and the State Fiscal bureau then projected a revenue deficit which took the budget out of "balance". Hence, the need for an "emergency" fiscal year budget repair bill.
Clearly there needs to be changes in the public unions. And, in some respects, I think Walker doesn't go far enough in excluding the police, fire fighters, and state troopers. (And I'm not buying the "they put their lives on the line" argument. Highway workers die every year across the nation, yet they're included.) But, there's no question that if this is an "emergency" it's a Walker created emergency, passing the revenue reducing measures without cutting expenses at the same time.
"Many, if not most, graduate students are teachers getting a master's to up their pay."
Care to cite a source for that? Between doctors, lawyers, engineers, and MBAs, I'll be surprised if teachers outnumber them.
Althouse.
You are to be commended for voting against your own self-interests and in favor of what you see as honest to goodness fairness to your neighbors and the state of Wisconsin.
How many teachers would knowingly support a mandate that would tear $10,000 out of their own purse because they understood it was right and just to do so?
Your teachers union bosses are advocating theft.
MM.
How does the state get to keep the $10K. The $10K goes to the health insurance companies and to wherever the pensions are invested, not to the state. The state has a wash on the $10K. Whatever they would have kept will go to pay the deficits that the state has that were papered over by the previous governor. Do you think those papered over deficits should just be kicked down the road to the next budget and the next governor and then the one after that?
Late to this, and not reading previous comments.
I personally pay 11% to my retirement fund. That doesn't include the 6.2% to Social Security. So, I just don't get to the other questions being asked. I don't see what is severe about being asked to pay into one's retirement.
You don't buy a car for .2%. You don't buy a house for .2%. Why should you get a retirement for .2%?
"Did Scott Walker create Wisconsin's budget crisis as a means to the end of cutting the public unions' collective bargaining rights?
"That's what the NYT thinks."
They 'think' this because nonsense authors like Naomi Klein in "Disaster Capitalaism" taught them that it is so.
But as drsanity - the recently retired clinical prof of psychiatry, Dr Pat Santy -points out, this is really because Democrats employ psychotic defenses routinely. In this case projection and its ally, denial.
Thus, "We didn't spent the state/nation into bankruptcy!" "Democrats [ie, socialists] are good--capitalists are evil" Ergo "Walker is Stalin!" "Republicans are Warmongers!" "Islam means Peace" "Freedom is slavery" And democrats are anti-democratic.
In other words, all the craziness the Left ought to be infamous for.
It really is odd that Wisconsin became ground zero, because we didn't have the budget disaster that was going on conspicuously in some of the other states. I'm really trying to understand this. Why Wisconsin?
Wisconsin became ground zero because Wisconsin became the first state willing to do something serious about it. All the other states that have worse financial problems (who are also doing nothing about it) are quickly becoming 'lost ground' (then there's the theory that they're already lost).
How are you describing "cost?" Are
you actually losing $10,000 in
actual income and benefits OR are you losing $10,000 because you are going to be required to put that
amount into your cost for already
existing benefits? And is your
cost paid in "pretax" dollars? If it is the latter, then you are not actually losing the money but it is just being redirected so that YOU are paying more for your own
benefits. Which is it?
The fact that the cuts are being pitched as an increase in pension contribution rather than a decrease in pay is entirely disingenuous. The whole thing seems to be done in entirely bad faith. If they want to move to a model where the employee contributes more, then sure, be upfront about that, but don't pretend that the pay cut is anything other than what it is.
If the man swept into office and proposed a 10% increase in income tax on, say, pick another occupation whose pay and benefits you envy - then the teabaggers would be out in the streets rioting. But the impact on the state budget and and impact on the paychecks of a group of people essential for the continued well-being of the state is exactly the same.
Maybe they still feel it is the best place to cut, but if they want public employees to be public-spirited and make unanticipated and unprecedented sacrifices to their pay package for the state budget without a fight then they at least deserve some respect, not such a transparent attempt to pull the wool over their eyes.
When the Koch's talk you all jump and you can't even hear the tune. So please sing along: "Oh yes we want to stay surfs, just poor wage slave surfs. If the boss says jump we just ask high, because he holds the paycheck i need or I'll die. Oh no I don't deserve to retire, I'd get bored and lose my desire. I don't play golf, or garden to well so to me a life of low paid work sounds swell. Oh I just hate the union, they're just spolied little children. They just want their say in their bebefits and pay, Oh how I hate the union.
Here's something that people aren't mentioning in all this talk about the high pay and "juice pensions" that public employees get:
Overall wages have not kept pace with inflation since the 1970s. That's one reason why one-earner households, including among the 'working class', used to be possible.
People who complain about union workers being overpaid seem unaware of the fact that this is the exception to the pattern that is slowly converting the US into a Third World country. They're taking the side of the corporatocracy that intends for the children and grandchildren to have a steadily declining standard of living and life expectancy.
In other words, people who are complaining about pampered unions have been royally scammed, and are defending their scammers.
billy - LOL! So because wages are static, we need unions to prop them back up? What a load of horse hockey.
@Shiloh re: cloture vs filibuster
"Again, a distinction w/out a difference ie a delay tactic!"
That statement is ludicrous.
Cloture = Way to limit/end debate/amendments
Filibuster = Debating endlessly to prevent vote on motion to proceed/consider
Pretty obvious distinction between the two, I think.
Put differently, one side can call for a cloture vote even if the other side is not attempting to stretch out debate for the purposes of blocking any vote on a bill. Or put differently again, one can use cloture to prevent ANY debate on a bill, not just excessive debate. That is in fact what the Senate Democrats did quite often during the last Congress.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph
Fox news Lies...
Koch brothers are loving this...
Scott Walker is a pawn for his employers.
I am from Wisconsin, and there is no budget crisis. Our teachers get paid LESS than many other States. As an American all of you who are approving any cuts in resources to our nation's education should be ASHAMED of yourselves!!! You are still believing the rhetoric and LIES of the ENEMY who seeks to destroy us from within!!!! Did you not see how the 8 years of Bush Jr destroyed our once mighty nation!?! WAKE UP FOOLS! GET EDUCATED!!!!
For years we have been promising 20 people parts of a pizza that only has 8 slices. Someone is going to be disappointed.
What I'd love to see is someone who is complaining about Walker's proposals come forward with a plan that does not make anyone angry.
It aint gonna happen because there is no way to fulfill the pie-in-the-sky promises workers and citizens have been made for decades. We are all going to end up tightening our belts -- it's just starting with yours.
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