It’s Working in Walker’s Wisconsin

Conservative

Type 40
Jul 1, 2011
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Signatures not withstanding, Walker will not lose his job.

It's Working in Walker's Wisconsin by Christian Schneider, City Journal Winter 2012
The unions’ battle against Walker’s reforms has rested on the argument that the changes would damage public services beyond repair. The truth, however, is that the reforms not only are saving money already; they’re doing so with little disruption to services. In early August, noticing the trend, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that Milwaukee would save more in health-care and pension costs than it would lose in state aid, leaving the city $11 million ahead in 2012—despite Mayor Tom Barrett’s prediction in March that Walker’s budget “makes our structural deficit explode.”

Once the reform limited collective bargaining to wage negotiations, districts could eliminate that requirement from their contracts and start bidding for health care on the open market. When the Appleton School District put its health-insurance contract up for bid, for instance, WEA Trust suddenly lowered its rates and promised to match any competitor’s price. Appleton will save $3 million during the current school year.

According to a report by the MacIver Institute, as of September 1, “at least 25 school districts in the Badger State had reported switching health care providers/plans or opening insurance bidding to outside companies.” The institute calculates that these steps will save the districts $211.45 per student. If the state’s other 250 districts currently served by WEA Trust follow suit, the savings statewide could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.

Madison School District Superintendent Dan Nerad predicted that 289 teachers in his district would be laid off. Walker insisted that his reforms were actually a job-retention program: by accepting small concessions in health and pension benefits, he argued, school districts would be able to spare hundreds of teachers’ jobs. The argument proved sound. So far, Nerad’s district has laid off no teachers at all, a pattern that has held in many of the state’s other large school districts. No teachers were laid off in Beloit and LaCrosse; Eau Claire saw a reduction of two teachers, while Racine and Wausau each laid off one. The Wauwatosa School District, which faced a $6.5 million shortfall, anticipated slashing 100 jobs—yet the new pension and health contributions saved them all.

71 percent of Wisconsinites believe that the state’s public schools have either stayed the same or improved over the previous half-year. More than three-quarters of Wisconsinites expect the state’s economy either to get better or to stay the same in the next year, up from 60 percent during the height of the union tumult in March.
 
This bullshit again? What, do you think if you keep repeating the lie people will believe it?

Walker's budget reforms had NOTHING TO DO with what the unions are upset about and the reason for the recall. All of the budget cuts he proposed had ALREADY BEEN AGREED TO BY THE UNIONS before he introduced his union-busting bill. The purpose of that bill had NOTHING to do with balancing Wisconsin's budget.

Conflating the two is a liar. You are either lying, or repeating lies from someone else.
 
This bullshit again? What, do you think if you keep repeating the lie people will believe it?

Walker's budget reforms had NOTHING TO DO with what the unions are upset about and the reason for the recall. All of the budget cuts he proposed had ALREADY BEEN AGREED TO BY THE UNIONS before he introduced his union-busting bill. The purpose of that bill had NOTHING to do with balancing Wisconsin's budget.

Conflating the two is a liar. You are either lying, or repeating lies from someone else.
liar.
 
This bullshit again? What, do you think if you keep repeating the lie people will believe it?

Walker's budget reforms had NOTHING TO DO with what the unions are upset about and the reason for the recall. All of the budget cuts he proposed had ALREADY BEEN AGREED TO BY THE UNIONS before he introduced his union-busting bill. The purpose of that bill had NOTHING to do with balancing Wisconsin's budget.

Conflating the two is a liar. You are either lying, or repeating lies from someone else.

BS. The union didnt come around until after the hammer was set in motion.
 
MADISON — Wisconsin's state budget is balanced — depending on the measure used to analyze it.

Gov. Scott Walker has said for months that he and the state's Republican government balanced the state budget through the normal measure of cash accounting.

But the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Monday that Walker's administration also told the federal government last month the budget is not balanced when using a different accounting method that considers pending expenses.

Under that method, known as "generally accepted accounting principles," the state has a deficit. That has been the case for years, including the previous Democratic administrations under Gov. Jim Doyle. Nevertheless, Democrats accuse Walker of using budget double speak.

If Wisconsin can show it has a deficit, federal law will allow the state to drop tens of thousands of adults from Medicaid programs to save money on health care costs. Walker has said he wants to cut health care spending in other ways, but if the federal government doesn't approve those, he said he has not ruled out dropping coverage for 53,000 adults.

To keep that option alive, state Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch wrote in a December letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that the state would have an undisclosed deficit from Jan. 1 of this year through June 30, 2013.

"It's nothing more than what we've been saying all along," Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said. The administration already had acknowledged that it had a GAAP deficit in state financial documents, estimated at $3 billion for this fiscal year and next fiscal year, Werwie said.

But when Walker campaigned for office in 2010, he called for the use of generally accepted accounting principles to balance every state budget.
Status of Wisconsin budget depends on method of measure | Green Bay Press Gazette | greenbaypressgazette.com


Gee, this says something ENTIRELY different, doesn't it?
And golly YOUR article is written by a CONSEVATIVE THINK TANK HACK, in case you didn't read the bottom of your cited article. Citing an OPINION piece is hardly proof of anything is it?

No wonder the country is in such dire straits. Thinking that a 3 BILLION DOLLAR DEFICIT is "working"
 
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Wisconsin Policy Research Institute - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Wisconsin Policy Research Institute is a non-profit conservative think tank advocating free market economics in the state of Wisconsin. The organization is based in Hartland, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee.

It has played a prominent role in the development of the State's school voucher program and has formulated recommendations for state prison policy.[




dear op this is a biased piece right from the very same people that support Walker.
 
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This bullshit again? What, do you think if you keep repeating the lie people will believe it?

Walker's budget reforms had NOTHING TO DO with what the unions are upset about and the reason for the recall. All of the budget cuts he proposed had ALREADY BEEN AGREED TO BY THE UNIONS before he introduced his union-busting bill. The purpose of that bill had NOTHING to do with balancing Wisconsin's budget.

Conflating the two is a liar. You are either lying, or repeating lies from someone else.

BS. The union didnt come around until after the hammer was set in motion.

No, actually that's the BS. The changes to the actual budget in the Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill had already passed negotiations with the public unions when the bill was introduced into the legislature, and it was only when it was introduced that the anti-collective-bargaining provisions became known.

If you were interested in knowing something rather than just scoring points, you'd realize that already.
 
This bullshit again? What, do you think if you keep repeating the lie people will believe it?

Walker's budget reforms had NOTHING TO DO with what the unions are upset about and the reason for the recall. All of the budget cuts he proposed had ALREADY BEEN AGREED TO BY THE UNIONS before he introduced his union-busting bill. The purpose of that bill had NOTHING to do with balancing Wisconsin's budget.

Conflating the two is a liar. You are either lying, or repeating lies from someone else.

BS. The union didnt come around until after the hammer was set in motion.

No, actually that's the BS. The changes to the actual budget in the Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill had already passed negotiations with the public unions when the bill was introduced into the legislature, and it was only when it was introduced that the anti-collective-bargaining provisions became known.

If you were interested in knowing something rather than just scoring points, you'd realize that already.

Not interested in the revisionist version.

Like many we watched it unfold.
 
And golly YOUR article is written by a CONSEVATIVE THINK TANK HACK, in case you didn't read the bottom of your cited article. Citing an OPINION piece is hardly proof of anything is it?

Please... show me a source which proves the specific instances and numbers used in the referenced OP are inaccurate. If you want to whine about the characterization of the situation, that's fine. But you cannot argue with the facts presented, unless you have a source to prove them inaccurate.

Do you?
 
Wisconsin Policy Research Institute - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Wisconsin Policy Research Institute is a non-profit conservative think tank advocating free market economics in the state of Wisconsin. The organization is based in Hartland, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee.

It has played a prominent role in the development of the State's school voucher program and has formulated recommendations for state prison policy.[




dear op this is a biased piece right from the very same people that support Walker.

show me a source that proves the numbers used are inaccurate.
 
show me a source that proves the numbers used are inaccurate.

The numbers are fine. It's the logical reasoning from them that's bogus. None of this is the result of denying collective bargaining rights to workers. All of it is the result of state budget cuts, which are a completely different subject.

Conflating the two is a lie.
 
The good people of Wisconsin will have the chance to let us know if they think it's working to have WALKER as governor.
 
show me a source that proves the numbers used are inaccurate.

The numbers are fine. It's the logical reasoning from them that's bogus. None of this is the result of denying collective bargaining rights to workers. All of it is the result of state budget cuts, which are a completely different subject.

Conflating the two is a lie.

Do try to follow...

Once the reform limited collective bargaining to wage negotiations, districts could eliminate that requirement from their contracts and start bidding for health care on the open market. When the Appleton School District put its health-insurance contract up for bid, for instance, WEA Trust suddenly lowered its rates and promised to match any competitor’s price. Appleton will save $3 million during the current school year.

Cause: reforms limited collective bargaining to wage negotiations, allowing benefits to be put up for open bids.

Effect: Appleton put health insurance contract up for bid and WEA lowered their rates, saving them $3,000,000.00.


It's not that difficult to follow, Dragon.
 
Do try to follow...

I followed that. But if you think that people are going to be persuaded to retain Walker because of it, you're nuts. At best, it's a cure worse than the disease. "Here, you guys have made this one stupid decision over the years, so naturally you'll want to surrender all your power to make decisions for yourself and hand power over to the government. That way we can reverse this one stupid decision you made.

Never mind what else we'll do."
 

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