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March 1, 2011
Volume 5, Number 9
In This Issue:
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1) Doing Themselves No
Favors
2) Why Stay Away?
3) Bought and Paid For
4) Walkers Reform Budget
5) More Club TV - Roulette
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Doing Themselves No Favors
 A Rasmussen poll finds that Wisconsin Senate Democrats’ decision to flee the state to block voting on the budget adjustment bill nets a whopping 25 percent approval among likely voters. 67 percent disapprove. Some of the cross-tabulations underlying those numbers are equally interesting. For instance, the Fugitive 14 can’t even manage majority approval among self-identified Democrats. Rasmussen found only 48 percent of them think the Senators did the right thing.
Closer to home, editorials in newspapers that normally can’t wait to roll over for liberals are sending an implicit message that the 14 might be better off staying where they are so people can elect real Senators a bit sooner.
The Wisconsin State Journal posed an interesting question: “Running away from their problems won’t solve them… So Wisconsin sits and waits. For how long? Until Walker apologizes for winning the last election?”
The Racine Journal Times said it plainly: “Senate Democrats have made the point. Now it's time for them to go back to Madison.” We’ll take that, even if we reject the idea that their point was properly made anywhere except on the Senate floor.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called the stunt a “game of charades” and said Democrats should “stop pretending their escape to Illinois was about democracy. It wasn't. In fact, quite the opposite. Democracy has creaked to a halt in their absence.”
The Appleton Post Crescent, not accustomed to supporting conservative policy, said, “The Senate Democrats delaying the bill's progress by leaving the state is just wrong.”
Everybody who thinks they’d enjoy being one of those 14, going door-to-door next year asking voters to re-elect them, raise your hand.
Why Stay Away?
 Given the overwhelming disapproval of the Wisconsin Senate Democrats’ antics, it’s been hard to see why they prolong the spectacle.
One explanation may suffice: The longer Democrats block a budget repair vote, the better chance their union sponsors have to exempt themselves from benefit concessions the unions dishonestly claim they’ve agreed to. Union bosses keep saying they accept the Governor’s proposed five- and twelve-percent employee contributions to retirement and health plans. Meanwhile, under the radar, two-faced union tactics are on full display in school district contract negotiations.
In Madison, where no one remembers when the school district was anything but a groveling toady to the teachers union, school board members rushed to approve an emergency four-year contract extension preserving current sweetheart arrangements. The extension is obviously calculated to outlast the Walker administration.
The Janesville school district faces a $10 million budget hole that will get bigger with a reduction of state aid, but teachers are balking at a request to reopen contract negotiations. The union chief put it succinctly in remarks to the Janesville Gazette: “Janesville Education Association President Dave Parr said reopening the contract is problematic because it’s not clear whether the union would be protected from the state budget-repair bill.”
The most recent numbers from the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development show 9.7 percent December unemployment in the City of Janesville. The teachers union expects these people to pay higher taxes so “the union would be protected.”
Unions are cynically building a scenario in which they’ll claim—falsely—that “Walker got what he wanted and things still got worse.”
If nothing else, this clarifies the argument over collective bargaining privileges—not rights, privileges. Seeing the unions’ brazen duplicity, what sensible person would negotiate with them about anything, ever?
Bought and Paid For
 Leftists never hesitate for a second to accuse a public official or anyone else who disagrees with them of being on the payroll of some hated special interest. In fact, it’s the Left’s favorite tactic, or vies for the title with cynically false charges of racism or whatever form of bigotry seems like it might work.
Conservatives, in sharp contrast, typically hesitate to accuse their opponents of being bought and paid for, evidently because we tend to think actual beliefs, whether they’re right or wrong, count for something, even if someone wrote a check.
But we will pay a sincere compliment to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for an example of actual, real-life journalism Monday, in which the newspaper performed the grunt work involved in finding out who gave what to whom. The bottom line is that for the Fugitive 14, campaign cash would shrivel without the dollars unions extract from taxpayers on the Senators’ behalf.
The oft-cited reason for objecting to the favored treatment enjoyed by public employee unions is that they take compulsory dues money from salaries financed by taxpayers and use that money to elect the people they negotiate with at contract time. We say it all the time. Thanks to the Journal Sentinel for presenting proof.
A Budget of Reform
 Yesterday, Governor Walker introduced his first biennial budget. A reform budget aimed at reducing Wisconsin’s 3.6 billion deficit. Below are some of the highlights. Watch the entire speech.
Democracy does not just expect differences, it demands them. It’s the manner in which we discuss and resolve those differences that leads to bold solutions and innovative reforms. I ask that we continue to be mindful of our differences – as well our similarities – in the coming days, weeks and months. Above all, let us not lose sight of the fact that we were each elected to represent the people of this state by participating in our democratic process.
We introduced a budget repair bill that is the first step toward addressing the long-term challenges facing our state - while laying the foundation for economic growth. The biennial budget I introduce today is built on the savings supplied by our budget repair bill – legislation, I might add, that we have already modified to address concerns expressed at the public hearing.
We need the savings in the budget repair bill because Wisconsin faces a $3.6 billion deficit. Too many politicians have failed to tell the truth about our financial crisis. They left Wisconsinites in the dark about the extent of our fiscal problems. The facts are clear: Wisconsin is broke and it’s time to start paying our bills today – so our kids are not stuck with even bigger bills tomorrow.
This deficit did not appear overnight. Wisconsin got here through a reliance on one-time fixes, accounting gimmicks and tax increases. Previous governors and legislatures from both parties took money from our tobacco settlement. They raided more than a billion dollars from the transportation fund and $200 million from the patients’ compensation fund. They increased taxes on the sick and set up shell games to draw down additional federal funds.
They relied on one-time federal stimulus dollars as if the money would be there forever – but it’s already gone.
Wisconsin owes Minnesota nearly $60 million and some $200 million to the patient’s compensation fund. In short, they governed for the short-term, with an eye only on the next election – not the next generation.
While families across this state were focused on making ends meet, the state government continued to grow well beyond our taxpayers’ ability to pay. But the time has come for us to make the tough choices necessary to put our state back on the path to prosperity.
We must work together to bring our spending in line with reality. We were elected --not to make the easy decisions to benefit ourselves -- but to make the difficult ones that will benefit our children and grandchildren.
Club for Growth TV - Roulette
 Wisconsin Club for Growth launched a new statewide television ad on Friday called "Roulette." The ad keeps pressure on the 14 Democrats who fled the state 13 days ago.
Watch the ad.
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