There are certain things in life most Americans can agree on regardless of their political persuasion. For example, with the exception of the far left, Americans agree our biggest financial problems come from too much government spending. (The far left doesn't care. They feel we can just keep printing money and borrowing.) You don't need a degree in accounting to know this will fail at some point.
Where the divide starts to come in to play is when it affects someone personally as we are seeing in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and a few other states with the budget repair proposals by those states respective Governor's. It becomes much more difficult to see the reality of the situation when it's going to affect you personally. But at some point, everyone has to cast aside the personal view of things and look at it logically.
In order for a state to run effectively, it has to live within its' means. If it doesn't, it will eventually fall apart. Our economy is not rebounding from the recession nearly as well as everyone had hoped. Wisconsin's current unemployment is at 7.5%, and nationally it's at 10%. For the next two fiscal years beginning July 1st, we have a budget deficit of $3.6 billion dollars. How do you fix it? Request a bailout? That's been done already and all it did was delay the inevitable. Do you raise taxes? You can try it but it's likely we will end up like the other states that have tried it. Businesses will pack up and leave for states where it's more affordable to do business. That will raise our unemployment, lower our tax revenue even further and make things worse. There is no choice but to cut spending.
The biggest cost in a business is labor...salary and benefits. The state is no different. The state needs government employees to run, but it has to maintain sensible levels of spending to in order to balance the books. We have ignored this basic premise for far too long and now we are in a jam.
At this point, everyone agrees it's reasonable for government workers to contribute more towards their benefits packages to help cut the spending. It's interesting that the government employees have only come around to this way of thinking in the last week or so and it has taken the threat of losing some of their collective bargaining rights to open their eyes to that reality.
The union side has said, ok, we will agree and government employees at the state level will pay more towards their healthcare and pensions but they want to stop there, no further and why isn't that enough?
If the only thing Governor Walker had to worry about was the state level it would be enough...for now, but he has the local governments to think of too. State government revenues depend on local governments running as well. Everything is interconnected.
At the local levels, county and city leaders are nervously waiting for the state budget to become public next week. They know the cuts are going to be deep, they just don't know how deep. Once those cuts hit, the county and city governments are going to be facing the exact same problem the state is facing right now, a huge budget deficit. How do all the local governments handle their deficits? Just like the state level, the biggest part of the budget at the city and county levels is labor, salary and benefits. So they are faced with the same choice, raise taxes or cut spending. They know they can't raise taxes because people have no more to give. So, they too will have to cut. But they won't be able to cut at the local level if the collective bargaining rights aren't modified.
Collective bargaining comes from a state law and it does not vary city by city or county by county. All government employees, right down to the county and city level can collectively bargain. There may be several different unions at those levels, but they all currently have the right to collective bargaining. So, if that's not modified at the local level as well, what will the city and county leaders do? They can't pass laws locally to limit collective bargaining, that's a state law.
History has shown us the unions don't like to give. They have proven this at every level. So when city and county leaders tell their local unionized employees they need to give, they are going to be in a battle and they won't have the leverage they currently have at the state level to force the issue, and if the local union employees won't budge, they will face layoffs too. THAT is why the collective bargaining law has to be modified. What happens if it isn't?
Layoff's will occur at the local level. Those employees will apply for and receive unemployment. That compensation comes from the state, not locally. In addition, those employees that get laid off will have less to spend locally which will put a strain on local businesses. Local businesses will be collecting less in the way of sales tax and the owners will pay less in income tax. But the laid off employees will also not be paying income tax, and all of that lowers the state revenue and it just keeps snowballing. Do you see what I mean when I say it's all interconnected?
As a nation, we should have heeded FDR's warning about unions for government employees, but we didn't. Government union employees should have been more willing to budge over the years, but they haven't, and now we have a mess. Had government union employees been more reasonable with their contributions over the years, collective bargaining would be viewed much more favorably right now.
Democrats and unions alike have got to quit running with this "sky is falling" nonsense. Yesterday, Democrat state Rep Joe Parisi claimed a loss of collective bargaining will lead to his wife and daughters being sexually harassed in the workplace with no recourse. This kind of hysteria needs to stop.
The bottom line is this bill needs to pass. The government union employees will see their net pay take an 8% hit on average. That's a whole lot better than layoffs.
Think about it.
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