At first glance, it appears as if political courage is back in vogue. Is it courage as in ‘guts’ or simply common sense? We believe to know the answer but let us analyze what happened in the Badger State Wisconsin for the several months. If nothing else, it has shown us a clear distinction between Republicans and Democrats. For many people, there has really not been a clearly identifiable difference between the two Party’s in many years.
Allow us to review what happened in Wisconsin during the past eight months: People in the State of Wisconsin recognized that it would be very difficult to bring about a balanced budget without raising taxes, this being a situation almost fifty States found themselves in after the economic downturn of the past few years. Unlike the Federal government, the Constitutions of the States require a balanced budget. The Republican candidates campaigned on a platform of doing just that and the candidate for Governor, Mr. Scott Walker did precisely that. He even specifically outlined of what steps he would take to achieve balancing the budget without raising taxes but just sim ply cutting spending. One of those provisions was the removal of collective bargaining provisions of certain public unions. Having been a County Commissioner for several years prior, he recognized the unsustainability of ever increasing union benefits and he was honest about it.
Guess what? In November 2010, he won. The people of Wisconsin decided to give the incumbent Democrat the boot and allow the Republicans to fix this problem. But it was not only the Governor’s office receiving a new occupant, the people also voted for Republican majorities in the State legislature, the Assembly as well as the Senate. The State Senate of Wisconsin is now composed of 19 Republicans and 14 Democrats. And they went to work balancing the budget together with the Governor. In order to do that, they demanded higher contributions towards health insurance and retirement funds from the State’s public union employees and to not having to deal with this over and over again every year, they wanted to remove the collective bargaining powers of some public unions.
When it came to voting on this, the Democrat Senators in a cowardly way fled the State and went into hiding in Illinois. With this action, they wanted to prevent the Senate from voting since the State’s constitution requires bi-partisan participation on budgetary matters. They reasoned that by leaving the State they could prevent such action. And at first, they did. In the meantime, union members from all over the country came to Wisconsin and occupied the State building in Madison. Their protests were heard but it did not deter the Republicans, they remained firm. After a few weeks of this stalemate, the Republicans applied a legislative procedure by separating the union provisions from the budgetary issues and then voted on it.
This brought a rash of unjustified criticism from Democrats and the Union bosses and members. But the Democrat Senators came back to Wisconsin, their mission (action) had failed. This entire episode has shed light on the unholy alliance between Unions and Democrats throughout the country at all levels of government. We believe that the Wisconsin Governor and the Republican majority in the State legislature are to be congratulated for holding firm. They told the voters how they would deal with the State budget, the voters approved and voted them in and now they have delivered on their campaign promises. What a novel concept! The Democrats (and unions) who now want to recall the Governor will fail in their attempt and the people of Wisconsin will have won in the end. If nothing else, we know now that not all politicians are the same, some even do what they promise during campaigns even if it is unpopular and requires courage and guts.