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Originally Posted by nikimcbee
I wonder what Aramike is up to? I haven't heard from him since this concluded.  |
This very issue has had me extremely tied up. I do consulting from a fiscally conservative perspective as part of my work, and lately I've had to hammer out about a paper each day, versus my average of once a week. Seems as though you guys have the basis covered pretty well, but I'd like to add a few things:
First, let's start with a "Word-of-the-Day", shall we?
Emphasis on the last two works mine.
If ANY private organization and union were to engage in the same types of negotiations routinely seen in the public sector, people would go to jail. As far as the principle of the issue is concerned, public unions should not exist, as has been effectively communicated here. If for no other reason, they ultimately impose a non-accountable indirect tax to the taxpayer. In other words, for every public employee the taxpayers require, that employee must be hired into a system that diverts money from wages into the union's and therefore the Democratic Party's coffers. There is no ethical justification for this. Prior to Governor Walker's changes, public employees WERE allowed to opt out of the unions - however, "fair pay" clauses required them to pay nonetheless.
Ergo, everytime a municipality needs to hire a teacher, that teacher's compensation package includes a direct contribution to the union which directly contributes to a single political party.
The compulsion of public union participation is ultimately an unfair, unaccoutable Democratic Party tax leveraged on the people of Wisconsin.
Now, enough with broad principle, I feel I should share the facts of what has happened here with clarity as most of the national media are confused in their reporting, likely due to their own confusion. I'm going to use some CAPS here to stress important points, and I'll try not to editorialize too much.
The bill that caused the initial outcry from the unions is Governor Walker's Budget Repair bill. The direct purpose of this bill is to address the shortfall in the CURRENT budget. Wisconsin budgets are biennial. For those of you new to this, that means we budget for two years at a time.
Our current biennial budget expires in June. In that budget, we face a significant shortfall of approximately $137 million. The budget repair bill addressed that part directly by attempting to enact employee pension and healthcare contribution increases while REFINANCING the current debt. That former piece was only modestly controversial, and was quickly conceeded to by the unions as soon as this next part was understood.
That part is that which addresses collective bargaining priviledges for public employees. Governor Walker included the so-called "anti-union" provisions in the Budget Repair bill in order to address what is known as a STRUCTURAL DEFICIT. What that means to one who may not be familiar with fiscal terminology is essentially that the system in and of itself is set up to run into deficit spending.
Meanwhile, as this is a fiscal bill, it was believed that a "superquorum" of 3/5 of the senate be present to vote on it. That would equal 20 senators. The Republicans had 19; the democrats 14.
Now, there were ultimately four provisions in this part of the bill that caused so much controversy.
- Limiting collective bargaining for public sector unions to wages and limiting THAT to the rate of inflation.
- Ending mandatory financial participation in the public union.
- Requiring union members to vote annually for recertification, and for THAT vote to require a 51% majority of ALL MEMBERS.
- Ending automatic withholding of union dues.
I'm going to editorialize here. Most people who are only loosely paying any attention to this story have only heard of that first provision. However, I believe that was the one of LEAST concern to the union and political leadership. The latter three stand to be far more damaging to the unions financially.
In fact, when Walker gave ground in negotiations on the first provision I layed out, Democrat State Senator Mark Miller, who was still on hiatus from Wisconsin and his duties, told the Wall Street Journal that they intended to return the following day. Furthmore, Walker staffers had indicated that an agreement was struck. Yet, Miller pulled an about-face the following day, remaining in Illinois and accusing the Walker administration of not negotiating in a letter. Walker then released emails to the public proving otherwise.
My conclusion is simple, and one would have to be naive to not follow - Miller though he had won a victory with concessions from Walker and told the media the 14 Democrats would be returning home. The union and political leadership reviewed the agreement and overruled that decision. This is the only logical explanation for the events that occurred. And, as such, it helps the illustrate the point that this is ultimately about money.
More to come...