This is going to be a bit of a rant this evening! LOL! But here’s the rough timeline and then a comment or two:
Wisconsin Republicans ruled the roost in Madison for eight years…with Governor Scott Walker and the majorities in both chambers of the legislature…and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos held his post for the last six of those years.
Democratic candidate for governor, the Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Evers runs with a plank outlining a middle class tax cut.
Tony Evers is elected Governor of Wisconsin, defeating Republican incumbent Scott Walker.
GOP leadership holds lame duck sessions and put new limits on the powers of the governor.
GOP leadership announces they will ignore the new governor’s prospective budget and will use the previous Republican budget as their template.
The governor announces that the middle class tax cut will be part of his new biennial budget for 2019 – 2021.
The GOP legislature rushes through a middle class tax cut using a revenue surplus from their last budget. This is a stand alone proposal not part of the budgetary process as it probably should be.
This tax cut does not incorporate any of the items that the governor ran on nor is it self sustaining in future budgets since it relies on a one time surplus.
The governor vetoes the GOP’s middle class tax cut because ^^^^^!
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos complains that Governor Tony Evers isn’t being bipartisan by vetoing their tax bill.
First rule of bipartisanship….having a bill named essentially the same thing…isn’t being bipartisan. Ya know? Plus you knew your bill would be vetoed when you passed it. It wasn’t going to accomplish the things the governor aims to do. It wasn’t sustainable. It was outside the budget process. It was rushed. It was another attempt to co-opt the governor’s platform. You do know that he is moving you left? I wrote about that!
It’s got to be a lot easier to put together bipartisan efforts in Madison compared to Washington. The governor is just across the rotunda from the speaker’s office. And everyone has a pretty good idea right now on what the other party is thinking…after all…we just finished an election cycle and all of the ideas were put out there. Now the governor supports a middle class tax cut…one that is sustainable in the next and future budgets. And whether your motivation in proposing your middle tax cut was to co-opt the governor’s platform or to steal his thunder using the same title doesn’t matter to me at this point. Just walk across the rotunda and meet with the governor and discuss your common concerns on this bill. And put something together for the next budget round that both parties can support.
Try it, you might like it. And then continue the process. Just pick out the issues that there is some common ground and find the things you agree on and both sides try to adjust their thoughts on the issues you don’t.
You can’t unilaterally do something…without any conversation with the other party…no matter what you want to call it…and then complain about the lack of bipartisan co-operation under the dome. This isn’t that hard. Madison isn’t the morass that Washington is…unless you let it devolve into that.
We are about to start the third month of the new legislature…let’s get things done for Wisconsin…start with the points we have in common…and for now…let the our divisive differences lie…after getting the hang of bipartisanship in real life…and learning how to co-operate…we can return to the things the ‘seem’ to be keeping us apart.
In fairness, in GOP Land- “bipartisan” means “get Democrats to do what I want.”
For example- GOPs have called for an end of the minimum markup law on gasoline. Evers just said he would do that in the budget, so let’s see if GOPs actually stick to their prior stance, or if they decide to be whiny children who stamp their feet at anything a Dem does that they didn’t propose first.
This budget is a perfect summation of the modern hard-left Democrat and their belief system: Taxes, abortion, benefits for illegal immigrants, and pot. Very, very depressing. Thank goodness for the Republican majority in the Legislature. Resist, recall, replace!!
I am still working on my budget response…
A Democrat proposed things that Democrats want? THE HORROR!!! The advantage for Evers is that the majority of Wisconsinite’s want tax fairness, Medicaid expansion, and investments in public schools and highways.
Isn’t it nice not to have a state government gearing policy towards corporate oligarchs and stirring up trailer trash? Guess GOPs aren’t used to thay reality, so they whining like babies.