What's Wrong with Wisconsin?
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Last week, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute launched the new “WI Magazine,” which will provide in-depth coverage of conservative issues in the state.
Among the articles in the first edition is a column by the magazine’s editor Charlie Sykes titled, “What’s Wrong with Wisconsin?”
The following are just a few of the answers he provides:
Wisconsin's per capita income has fallen from 98% of the national average at the beginning of the decade to under 94% at the end of last year - a drop of $5,000 a year for a family of four. Yet our neighbors - who share the scourge of our climate - continue to grow comparatively rich. Our per capita income ($34,476) lags behind both Minnesota ($38,751) and Illinois ($38,297).
We lag behind the nation and our own region both in creating jobs and opening new businesses. In 2006, the number of businesses nationally grew by 2.5%, while here the number of new private-sector businesses dropped 0.4%. By the end of 2007, the state had 2,487 fewer private businesses than it had in 2006. And so it goes. Last year, Wisconsin was one of just 20 states where local venture capital funds raised no money at all.
What's the matter with Wisconsin?
…She has one of the worst budget deficits in the country, but we send up the cry for more spending and pork; lets the roads go to hell, but choo-choo trains for everyone! Losing manufacturing jobs? Let's find ways to tax businesses more and raise the costs of energy! Let's block nuclear power, litigate wind power and harass coal power!
Businesses shutting down? Raise the minimum wage; mandate mandatory sick pay and insurance coverage! Exports growing as a source of state jobs? Let's have the Legislature salivate for a Buy-American-Only trade war! Urban schools in meltdown? Strangle school choice if the unions demand it!
…She is losing wealth, population and standing. She has got her statesmen, and business and commerce have been put in their place. Wisconsin is all right. We never really believed in a dog-eat-dog capitalism or the lure of filthy lucre (unless it comes in the form of taxes). Here in Wisconsin, after all, we are all progressives yearning for a smoke-free, environmentally friendly, jobless Midwestern utopia. We are definitely all right.
Doyle Spends 9.8% More
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If you listened closely to Governor Doyle’s budget speech in February, you would have thought Wisconsin was going through the most painful belt-tightening in state history. Doyle warned of “historic” cuts to programs in order to make up the $5.9 billion deficit that he is mostly to blame for.
Yet according to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, total state spending increases by nearly 10% in the next budget over the previous budget. You may be wondering – how can the state actually increase spending when there’s a multi-billion deficit?
There are a few reasons – first, $1.8 billion of the “cuts” Doyle implements are achieved simply by denying the new spending requests made by his own agencies. So they’re not cuts at all – they’re simply refusing to grant large increases.
Secondly, Doyle increases taxes by $2.1 billion – painful, job-killing taxes which provide businesses with the incentive to locate in other states. At the same time middle class families are struggling to make ends meet, Governor Doyle is going to sock them with more huge tax increases, which could very well cost them their jobs.
Finally, Doyle’s budget incorporates $4.5 billion in federal revenue, as passed by Congress recently in its various “stimulus” bills. Of course, that’s money that won’t be available in the next budget, so Wisconsin residents can expect even more taxes and fees to fill the hole left by the evaporation of federal funds. According to the Rockerfeller Institute in New York, state budgets could be left with between $70 billion and $100 billion holes to fill once the federal “stimulus” money goes away – and Wisconsin will be among those hardest hit.
What you may notice is that actual government “cuts” are absent from Doyle’s budget. Once again, a Doyle budget drives us further into debt to feed his insatiable desire for spending.
In fact, even as the state was losing 72,500 jobs last year, the number of government jobs increased by 900. Christian Schneider of WPRI, writing in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel explains the “dreamland” our elected officials live in:
The growth in government jobs as incomes in the state recede further explains the fiscal dreamland in which our elected officials continue to reside. Minimum wage hikes, climate change regulations, sick leave mandates and higher job taxes all will serve to purge employees from business payrolls. Amid the squealing of public school teachers, the obeisant Doyle has vowed to eliminate the qualified economic offer, which guarantees teachers a 3.8% pay and benefits increase every year. Teachers complained about their pay being too low -think there's any recently laid-off employee of Harley-Davidson who wouldn't saw off his left leg for a QEO about now?
If you like the way Doyle and the Legislature have run the state government into the ground, you'll absolutely love it when they detonate your place of work. If they're half as effective at immolating the private sector as they have been in ruining government, then you can look forward to being dependent on an underfunded government program in no time.
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