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5/11/2009
Parins: Death by a thousand cuts
First we had to pass unemployment benefits for part-timers … or we wouldn’t get the stimulus funds to extend regular UI benefits for our long-term, dare I say ‘chronic’ unemployed. It is just a little extra payroll tax, the feds said, and you can always sunset the provision or repeal it later. Yeah, right, like government ever goes on a diet.
Now we are going to pad our tax bills by extending Wisconsin Retirement System benefits to part-time public school aides - and we’re doing it on our own dime. Excuse me, our great-great grand-children’s dime. No federal pressure. It’s just a little boost to school districts’ unfunded actuarial liability. That’s right. We’re not extending benefits on largess, from a secure surplus. We’re doing it on credit! Consumers had their spending spree, now we live in Foreclosureland in Bail-Out Nation. Maybe school districts will invest in Son of CDO -- the successor to Certified Debt Obligations -- to cover these WRS liabilities, eh? Brilliant! Wile E. Coyote, Genius.
Sen. Alberta Darling raised an objection before Joint Finance Committee Democrats had their way. “I'm sorry to get a little emotional about it,” Darling said, “but I think somebody's going to have to start waking up, and getting inside the skins of real people out there who are really going to be paying for all this.” And you know how our committee co-chairman replied to her legitimate concerns? “I'm sorry, that's B.S.” Rep. Marc Pocan argued. “It's completely not true. These [part-time educators] are people on BadgerCare. It's not like they're living high off the hog, on the backs of the people in River Hills. I am just tired of some of the rhetoric we put out here, which has no basis in reality.”
The provision passed on a party-line 11-4 vote. ‘Chump change,” Pocan called it, in effect. But it all adds up. Like the guy who always buys the scratch tickets at the gas station. It’s just a couple bucks. But then he is surprised when he can’t pay the cable bill at the end of the month.
Now many of you may have read of these events, probably on FoxPolitics.net. So what? How many have written your State Representative? The blood will continue to run until the tourniquet of representative government is turned down hard. This debt may not make it to our children; many of the working Boomers will pay and pay hard before it reaches the younger generation. I seem to remember the opening statement of our Legislative Phlebotomist, Rep. Tom Nelson who as much as said when he addressed our last month's meeting- 'we won and we are going to push Democratic legislation down the throats of government and we don't really care the outcome.’ We are right , and we are might.
Here is what Darling should have replied: “Yes, you’re right, the amount is meager, not more than a paper cut to our thick-skinned taxpayers. But 999 more … and they die. And this is only our first week of budget action. We’re just getting started here delivering our death by a thousand cuts.”
Write your Legislators, Federal and State. Do not throw your pearls before swine, lest you suffer the pandemic of citizen apathy, those who just want to get along. Politics is a blood sport regardless of the large swipe of the "Reinvestment and Recovery Act" or the slow budgetary bloodletting our Governor and his Democratic Legislature have begun. Our death by a thousand cuts...
Richard Parins is the president of the Brown County Taxpayers Association.
COMMENTS
The liberal Democrats didn't know, and refuse to admit, what they did to Social Security since 1935 and now it appears Wisconsin's liberal Democrats are gleefully skipping-on down the same road with the WRS. What a shame people are so stupid and self-absorbed they refuse to learn from history's mistakes.
Duke (Mon May 11 09:52:47 2009)
Richard is right about the average taxpayer and the indifference that is out there as to what government does. I think, however, that more people are getting involved as in the TEA Parties and Doyle recall that you may see a change in who gets elected in 2010. We have no hope at this point at the State Level until 2010 and quite a bit could be ramed thru the Assembly and State Senate but they will be accountable for their votes if we don't let them off the hook and forget what they have proposed by the next election. Blogs like this one keep the information flowing and the fires burning. Now it is our(taxpayers) responsibility to make sure our reprsentatives know we are serious and that their job is at stake.
Mike
Mike Thomas (Mon May 11 15:32:15 2009)
I have already died, or at least I thought I did. I went to Libertarian heaven. Today I have to wake up and realize it was a dream, a small, conservative government bent on individual freedom. Back to the big and bigger and "high" and higher" spending government of the "big two". I wil ocntinue to vote for Libertarians, that is only hope for change right now.
Brad (Wed May 13 16:55:39 2009)
It is time that more average taxpayer's get involved. If you are interested, please check out www.recalldoyle.com We need more volunteers to get involved.
Orv (Wed May 13 20:32:27 2009)
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