If we need any more evidence that Governor Walker's "budget repair bill" isn't about fiscal responsibility at all, but really about busting Wisconsin's unions, here it is. It turns out that the "deficit" the bill is supposed to fix was created by... none other than Governor Scott Walker.
Talking Points Memo has the scoop:
Wisconsin's new Republican governor has framed his assault on public worker's collective bargaining rights as a needed measure of fiscal austerity during tough times.
The reality is radically different. Unlike true austerity measures -- service rollbacks, furloughs, and other temporary measures that cause pain but save money -- rolling back worker's bargaining rights by itself saves almost nothing on its own. But Walker's doing it anyhow, to knock down a barrier and allow him to cut state employee benefits immediately.
Furthermore, this broadside comes less than a month after the state's fiscal bureau -- the Wisconsin equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office -- concluded that Wisconsin isn't even in need of austerity measures, and could conclude the fiscal year with a surplus. In fact, they say that the current budget shortfall is a direct result of tax cut policies Walker enacted in his first days in office.
Walker has been blaming the spend-happy Democrats recently voted out of office, but as with much of his rhetoric, this turns out to be a big lie:
There is no question that these are tough times, and they may require tough choices.
But Gov. Scott Walker is not making tough choices. He is making political choices, and they are designed not to balance budgets but to improve his political position and that of his party.
[...]
In its Jan. 31 memo to legislators on the condition of the state's budget, the Fiscal Bureau determined that the state will end the year with a balance of $121.4 million.
To the extent that there is an imbalance -- Walker claims there is a $137 million deficit -- it is not because of a drop in revenues or increases in the cost of state employee contracts, benefits or pensions. It is because Walker and his allies pushed through $140 million in new spending for special-interest groups in January.
So Walker created this deficit in order to justify his assault on working families. "Family values", indeed.
This news needs to be spread far and wide, especially as other states under Tea Party control move to follow Walker's lead. It may just turn out that their "deficits" are as phony as Wisconsin's.