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In English: The governor called a special session of the legislature and signed two business tax breaks and a conservative health-care policy experiment that lowers overall tax revenues (among other things). The new legislation was not offset, and it helped turn a surplus into a deficit [see update at end of post]. As Brian Beutler writes, "public workers are being asked to pick up the tab for this agenda."
But even that's not the full story here. Public employees aren't being asked to make a one-time payment into the state's coffers. Rather, Walker is proposing to sharply curtail their right to bargain collectively. A cyclical downturn that isn't their fault, plus an unexpected reversal in Wisconsin's budget picture that wasn't their doing, is being used to permanently end their ability to sit across the table from their employer and negotiate what their health insurance should look like.
That's how you keep a crisis from going to waste: You take a complicated problem that requires the apparent need for bold action and use it to achieve a longtime ideological objective. In this case, permanently weakening public-employee unions, a group much-loathed by Republicans in general and by the Republican legislators who have to battle them in elections in particular. And note that not all public-employee unions are covered by Walker's proposal: the more conservative public-safety unions -- notably police and firefighters, many of whom endorsed Walker -- are exempt.
If you read Walker's State of the State address, you can watch him hide the ball on what he's doing. "Our upcoming budget is built on the premise that we must right size our government," he said. "That means reforming public employee benefits -- as well as reforming entitlement programs and reforming the state's relationship with local governments." Not a word on his actual proposal, which is to end collective bargaining for benefits.
If all Walker was doing was reforming public employee benefits, I'd have little problem with it. There's too much deferred compensation in public employee packages, and though the blame for that structure lies partially with the government officials and state residents who wanted to pay later for services now, it's true that situations change and unsustainable commitments require reforms. But that's not what Walker is doing. He's attacking the right to bargain collectively -- which is to say, he's attacking the very foundation of labor unions, and of worker power -- and using an economic crisis unions didn't cause, and a budget reversal that Walker himself helped create, to justify it.
And it's not as if public employees aren't hurting. In the Wisconsin budget report I quoted earlier, the state's fiscal bureau goes on to survey the state of the economy. "Going forward, Global Insight expects private sector payrolls to grow by 2.1 million in 2011, 2.6 million in 2012, and 2.5 million in 2013. Projected cutbacks in the number of public sector employees, however, are expected to partially offset those private sector gains. In 2010, the number of state and local government employees fell by an estimated 208,000 positions. In 2011, those cutbacks are expected to total an additional 150,000 positions." In other words, private jobs are coming back, but state and local jobs are still being lost. Public-employee unions are on the mat. Walker is trying to make sure they don't get back up.
Source: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/02/unions_arent_to_blame_for...
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Miley Cyrus Ruined by Disney & Hot w/ Justin Bieberby TheYoungTurks40,185 views
No to public unions, yes to private....it's the fat cats who run the private,remember.
linwooddeaton 5 months ago
The U.S government is run by children and fools.
yomamasapeach 6 months ago
President Reagan: “We must also insure that taxes due the government are collected. And that a fair share of the burden is borne by all.”
the1tigglet 7 months ago
Its about time public unions get broken up. They are killing local economies with their bloated benefits, salaries, and ridiculous pensions that everyone gets stuck paying for. Alls you ever hear from them is "tax the rich and the mean, evil companies". Yeah right. Come up with something realistic, would ya? Everywhere there is a union, there is a financial crisis - auto industry, airline industry, schools, etc, etc. Wonder if there is any correlation there? Ya think?
s2mikey 7 months ago
The State accounting office had predicted a $120 million surplus in Wisconsin for this year. Then the GOVERNOR cut taxes by $140 million and created this artificial budget crisis. Then ironically blamed it on the Unions.
This is Union busting, pure and simple. The Unions are the biggest opposition to the Republican. It is pure breaking of the competition that made America great.
I hope they throw his ass in jail.
blueboyblue 8 months ago 2
Yep this is exactly what I thought it was going to be, more "liberal" fear mongering. Sad you can't come up with a better solution and instead just blast the other side with rhetoric and hyperbole.
jamesonfire88 9 months ago
They didnt agree to the cuts, one union official said "they would consider the changes" fact is, the union made it clear they would sooner see 1/3 of their members unemployed than see a penny less in their union official's check, he said thousands from being unemployed, holy shit paying a whole 5.8 towards your pension, yep that's nuts, while the rest of us pay around 70 while picking up their 94% not covered by them...
ars62287 9 months ago
Then let the corporations buy their own products and the American people build their own.
The rust belt is the end result of Republican's setting up deal with foreign campaign contributing companies. Communist China owns the Republicans and Tea Party.
Scott Walker and Paul Ryan are a couple owned by the Koch brothers.
nightprwlr63 10 months ago