Trying it their way, IV
Several weeks ago we took a look at Illinois. We decided to look again because things have gone from very bad to considerably worse. Little did we know
The Wall Street Journal would do a big part of our work for us.
In a Friday editorial, the
Journal noted that even after massive tax increases enacted to avoid the kind of reforms adopted in Wisconsin, Illinois state finances are still a mess, the state’s credit rating was downgraded to the lowest in the nation, and the most prized possession of reform opponents, government employee pensions, are underfunded by more than half.
Last Thursday, Chicago’s WBBM Radio
reported that state government simply isn’t paying its bills and regardless of the tax hikes that were supposed to put Illinois back on a sound financial footing, there’s no sign of things getting anything but worse.
WBBM reported that some state lawmakers are suggesting the solution is to borrow more money. That will be even more difficult—or at least more expensive for taxpayers— thanks to the endless parade of previous legislative actions destroying the state’s credit.
Sunday’s
Chicago Tribune weighed in with an editorial spelling out that the balanced-budget-through-higher-taxes ploy was a load of bunk and named the lawmakers who voted for it, urging citizens to retaliate at the polls.
Watch for “The Simpsons” one of these weeks to come up with a joke about Illinois state government being hard to reach because “they live in their car.”
And remember Democrats were driving Wisconsin down the same road a little more than a year ago.
The Numbers Racket
You’ve probably noticed Democrats in the Wisconsin Legislature are lining up to play a numbers game with Wisconsin employment statistics.
Ah, statistics. You know what they say about them: statistics can be tortured to confirm anything you want to prove. Democrats are trying to prove that Governor Walker is failing at job creation. They can find some numbers that might seem to help their argument, but it’s a very dangerous game for them to play.
Start with the numbers that, according to Democrats, show Wisconsin has lost jobs in each of the last six months. They love numbers like that because everybody knows Wisconsin lost so many jobs when they were in charge, more people wound up working for government than in manufacturing. States, indeed whole nations, go broke that way. Never mind; the Democrats’ idea of a positive program is to argue that the guy who replaced them is just as bad as they were.
Except he’s not.
The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD), which doesn’t get to make things up,
reports that the number of people working in Wisconsin rose by almost 7,000 in December compared with November, and by more than 21,000 compared with December 2010.
Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is better than those of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.
We mentioned that this is a very dangerous game for Democrats to play. That’s because when you trash someone else’s performance you invite comparison. The DWD reported that Wisconsin’s unemployment rate dropped to 7.1 percent, from 7.3 percent the previous month and 7.5 percent the month before that. Why is that dangerous for Democrats? Because the nationwide unemployment rate is 8.5 percent and it’s
their guy who owns that number.
A real education
Long-term, we hope the education reforms Governor Walker rolled out last Thursday accomplish their objectives on behalf of Wisconsin school children, especially through improved reading skills and evaluation of the performance of teachers and schools.
Short-term, we’re all getting an education from the reform plans—or more accurately from Democrats trying create clouds of suspicion over them.
Here’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers, as quoted by the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel: "I have not been involved in the drafting of the education proposals that have been announced."
Evidently the “nonpartisan” Superintendent forgot he put together one of the three task forces that generated recommendations for the reforms. And that the specifics of legislation in drafting are
always held in confidence between legislative sponsors and the Legislative Reference Bureau. That’s one way the Bureau stays nonpartisan.
Another task force participant—who doesn’t even pretend to be nonpartisan—detected evil intent in bills she hasn’t even read. State Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts (D-Middleton) just
knows it’s all bad: “I have not yet seen the legislation being drafted by the Governor and the Republican leaders and am very concerned that the bipartisan efforts that have come from this group’s work thus far are being hijacked for political gain.”
If anybody’s seeking political gain, it looks to us like the people who participated in putting together the reform proposals and are now denouncing them before they’re even introduced. Pope-Roberts went so far as to accuse the Governor of mandating programs without funding them, something he specifically said was important not to do. Even the
Journal Sentinel managed to report that much.
So in one sense, the reforms are already adding to our store of knowledge: We now have a better understanding of Madison Liberals’ concept of integrity.
