Walker Puts It On the Line for Local Government

Scott Walker is giving local taxing agencies a great big tool to help them balance their budgets. He didn’t have to do that, you know.  He could have simply reduced Shared Revenues (money to municipalities and counties) and State Equalization Aid (money to school systems) without helping those systems out at all.  That is exactly what Jim Doyle, Walker's predecessor, had planned to do.

But Walker refused to leave local governments out on that proverbial limb.   Instead he put his neck on the block and got the law passed that demanded—ordered!—the local governing systems to replace that lost state subsidy with money saved through long overdue, reasonable contributions by employees to their pension funds and health care benefits.

That was a gutsy thing to do.

No one in government is going to give up their piece of the pie happily.   And when you take a large section of the public sector and force them to do just that—all at once—you get the phenomenon we recently observed in Madison.

There aren’t very many men or women with courage that get that high in office.   Most attain those lofty heights through cowardly demagoguery.

We have a real jewel here in Wisconsin with Scott Walker as our governor.  He is upsetting thousands who have been leaching unjustly off the labors of hard working Wisconsinites.   But he will be appreciated by millions who deserve to keep the fruits of their labor and use their energy to rebuild a prosperous state in the place of one that is on the verge of bankruptcy.