{"id":714,"date":"2011-02-23T12:06:33","date_gmt":"2011-02-23T17:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=714"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:58:30","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:58:30","slug":"wisconsin-can-afford-tax-cuts-not-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2011\/02\/23\/wisconsin-can-afford-tax-cuts-not-teachers\/","title":{"rendered":"Wisconsin can afford tax cuts, not teachers?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yevgeny Shrago<\/em><\/p>\n

Ohio and Indiana have\u00a0followed<\/a>\u00a0Wisconsin into the Randian dream of breaking public sector unions by stripping them of dearly bought collective bargaining rights. Although most Americans (when polled by someone other than a Republican quasi-operative like Scott Rasmussen)\u00a0oppose<\/a>\u00a0Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker\u2019s plan, don\u2019t expect this to be the sort of issue that drives votes outside of these states in 2012.\u00a0Low<\/a>unionization rates, compounded by the last Congress\u2019s failure to pass the Employment Free Choice Act, means that the battles this month may be the last stand of American labor unions.<\/p>\n

The larger issue here, however, is the Republican crusade to cut government by eliminating \u201cwaste\u201d and \u201cfraud.\u201d \u00a0In this case, waste involves the salaries and jobs of teachers, firemen and police officers, not to mention the thousands of other providers of important public services. At the federal level, there was only one nod to the burgeoning problem with entitlements in the latest grand bargain budget plan: cuts to the Social Security Administration\u2019s\u00a0administrative apparatus<\/a>. The people ensuring that claims aren\u2019t fraudulent and being disbursed as effectively as possible are apparently the \u201cwaste\u201d and \u201cfraud\u201d we\u2019ve been looking for.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The big lie is that these cuts provide any meaningful savings. In Wisconsin, it\u2019s worth noticing that Governor Walker\u2019s cuts don\u2019t actually balance the budget. The\u00a0actual budget savings<\/a>\u00a0this year come from an uncontroversial restructuring of the state debt and it\u2019s not only on the most\u00a0pessimistic reading<\/a>\u00a0of state obligations that any deficit exists this year. Walker claims that the cuts are necessary to close the $3.6B gap coming up in Wisconsin\u2019s next two year budget. Maybe, but according to the 2009-2011\u00a0Wisconsin budget report (.PDF link)<\/a>, commitments in 2011-13 were scheduled to fall to an all time low. Governor Walker hasn\u2019t introduced the 2011-2013 budget yet because he\u2019s taking time to campaign against the public sector unions. Could the projected shortfall be so large because Governor Walker has already\u00a0cut taxes<\/a>\u00a0and plans to\u00a0eliminate<\/a>\u00a0the state corporate income tax entirely? While Scott Walker talks about how the sacrifices public employees would make are \u201cmodest, at least to those outside government\u201d, he continues to reinforce the Republican mantra that any sacrifice is too much for big business.<\/p>\n

Of course, in the context of Grover Norquist\u2019s famous dictum \u201cI don\u2019t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub\u201d, this tax cut\/pay cut dance makes sense. With every wave of public sector pay cuts that will follow the breaking of the unions, the most talented public servants leave to the private sector, where they can make more money for equivalent work.*<\/a>\u00a0When the remaining employees are asked to do more to cover for their departed peers and their union can\u2019t protect them, they can\u2019t do the work as well. This will reinforce the Republican talking point that big government doesn\u2019t work and grease the wheels for another round of public sector cuts. Eliminating collective bargaining rights just makes this dance easier.<\/p>\n

<\/a>*Republican claims that public sector workers are overpaid relative to the populace willfully ignore the fact that they also are far more likely to hold a college degree, and that they earn less than the average private sector worker with such a degree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yevgeny Shrago Ohio and Indiana have\u00a0followed\u00a0Wisconsin into the Randian dream of breaking public sector unions by stripping them of dearly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-bw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}