After I watched this morning's Meet The Press, [who watches MSNBC anyway, right Walker?!?], he and I do agree on one thing. By eliminating collective bargaining, municipalities and schools will have an easier time handling the billions of dollars of cut that are coming tomorrow. By eliminating hundreds of discussions at the local level, we can be more efficient in dealing with the budget loss.
Walker further argues that over the last twelve days, multiple unions have negotiated unsustainable contracts. He strengthens his position by concluding that these unions cannot be trusted. Of course, many people that have paid attention to Walker's doublespeak don't trust him either.
Greed and defending your turf, these two things are human nature. We look to our government to keep these things in check, and at a time that trust in government [Congress, in particular] is at an all time low, it is fair from a bipartisian perspective to question if Government is acting in the best interests of the people. I conclude that this general distrust is what has led to the events in Madison.
Assuming Bill 11 passes as is, after the dust settles, hundreds of millions of dollar will be removed from local economies and instead be redirected to funding ETF. This is sure to have a negative effect on local business as more will look to megachains for bare necessities.
As municipalities and school districts increase healthcare premiums to deal with the loss of state aid [estimated to be over $1 Billion total], more Wisconsinites will be without healthcare and even more money will be removed from the local economy, making the local business situation much worse. I believe that this will create a vicious cycle where income tax revenues drop, necessitating the need for further and further cuts since Governor Walker is strongly opposed to corporate taxes.
Choosing between paying union dues vs having a roof and food -will- eliminate the unions by no later than 2014. This is when I believe the real fun will begin, but more on that in another post.
The elimination of collective bargaining will make the budget cuts easier to administer, I plan to continue to protest against the Bill so that there is more time for discourse, because I believe this bill is not "laser focused" on budget repair, and its implementation, as is, will put Wisconsin on a race to the bottom.
Walker keeps pointing to the recently negotiated local government union contracts as an example of why the unions can't be trusted. If the unions really had agreed to take cuts, why did they just negotiate new contracts?
ReplyDeleteWalker seems to miss the point that is wasn't the unions that made these decisions, but the local governments. If the local governments really wanted the changes that Walker is promoting in his emergency budget bill, all they had to do was support Walker and wait for the bill to pass. Instead, these local governments decided to proceed ahead with emergency sessions to protect their employees.
These newly negotiated union contracts do not demonstrate unions disagreeing with Walker, they demonstrate local governments disagreeing with Walker meddling in their local affairs. These local governments do not want the State to mess with their employee's collective bargaining rights.