Tim Cavanaugh wonders whether Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is a “pro-union mole” because of the political firestorm he’s created in attempting to strip public workers in the state of their collective bargaining rights:
Just two weeks ago, the crisis of government employee pensions was an issue for Democrats. If you look closely at states around the country, it still is. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, California Gov. Jerry Brown, even Rahmbo himself, all are engaged to varying degrees in open campaigns to roll back compensation packages for government employees. In the Nutmeg State, Gov. Dan Malloy is seeking billion-dollar cuts in public sector compensation spending in his next budget. These Democratic executives and candidates are not alienating their union donors out of limited government principle; they’re doing it because they see the logarithmic cascade of pension liability as a threat to public parks, environmental programs, rail transit, and other budget items Democrats like.
All that has now been lost in a fog of Republocrat positioning. You’d think everything was going swimmingly until the meddlesome voters gave Republicans the upper hand in so many states.
If Walker had just been trying to cut benefits, he would have won in a walk. One look at Cavanaugh’s list shows that Democratic pols, supposedly helpless against the inherent conflicts of interest created by the existence of public worker unions, did so easily enough. But Walker’s goal wasn’t improving the state’s fiscal outlook, it was destroying the unions. The political objective of harming a Democratic constituency took priority over balancing the budget.
As I wrote at Greg’s place yesterday, the structual factors are all on the GOP’s side in Wisconsin so I’ll be surprised if Walker actually loses this standoff. But the point is that he deliberately picked a harder fight than he needed to, and if he had just focused on cutting benefits, he would have had the public on his side. That’s why the Democrats Cavanaugh listed were able to get what they wanted–they were just trying to cut benefits, they weren’t trying to destroy the unions outright.
