When you point a finger, there are 3 more pointing back at you
The headline just says it all. Things are so bad here in the Legislature that the newspaper is begging Scott Walker to come home, if only for a short time.
This isn't from The Onion, but from the most highly read Wisconsin newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. One that has endorsed Scott Walker, tends to ignore his bad news, and prints his talking points like Gospel.
But here in Wisconsin, the budget he proposed last winter is foundering, and not because of Democratic opposition but because his Republican colleagues can't come to terms. Last week, Republican leaders were sniping at each other over whether Assembly Republicans wanted to delay the reconstruction of the Zoo Interchange to build pressure for increasing the gas tax or vehicle registration fees.
The impasse is apparently over how to pay for the transportation budget and how to finance a deal for a new arena in downtown Milwaukee. These are big issues, and they deserve Walker's attention. In addition, as an editorial on Friday on this page noted, there are a host of items in the budget that simply shouldn't be there. Mainly, they're non-budget items sneaked into the budget with little discussion or public input, a practice that candidate Walker decried in 2010. In an informal Journal Sentinel poll last week, readers overwhelmingly were giving the Legislature an F grade on its handling of the budget.
(bolding is mine)
I've also written about the mayhem that Republican Legislators brought to the budget process while Walker has been out campaigning (unannounced) for President. And, in an editorial last week, the newspapers' editorial staff seemed to agree.
But there's another problem with this budget: It's so full of non-budget dead weight that it's kind of amazing it doesn't just sink of its own accord.
On their own, many of these items are worthy of discussion and may be even worthy of passage. But most are policy matters that have little or nothing to do with the state's fiscal books. They deserve full and separate consideration — including public hearings and a healthy public debate — before they become law. Instead, they've been quietly inserted into the budget, often in the wee hours, to avoid public scrutiny. Citizens should demand they be removed from the budget; legislators should have the decency to do so.
(bolding is mine)
It's bad enough that Walker has not only completely flip flopped on his 2010 campaign promise to not use the budget for non-budgetary items, but crammed his policy agenda into each and every budget (starting with busting the unions of all public employees in Wisconsin in his infamous Budget Repair Bill). Now Republican Legislators have followed Walkers' lead inserting every item on their policy wish list into the budget this year.
For example, in 2010, Gov. Scott Walker's campaign website proclaimed he would "Strip policy and pork projects from the state budget. The budget process should be about funding essential government services based on the taxpayers' ability to pay. It should not be about horse trading for special interest groups or establishing talking points for the next campaign."
The governor was right then, but his office turned its back on that sound good government philosophy by loading up this budget with policy items, including items on education, long-term health care and natural resources. And then the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee got into the act.
Walker has found it to be a great strategy for getting policy items passed since there are so many of them that most go unnoticed in an 1800 page budget. And even those that
do get noticed, like his recent attempt to change the mission statement of our State University system, are only occasionally removed when lame excuses ("the University requested the change" - lie) and placing blame elsewhere ("it was a drafting error" - lie) don't work. The rest simply pass right on through with no debate and no discussion.
Loading up the budget with non-budgetary items is no way to run a government. Walker acknowledged that in 2010.
Yes, he acknowledged that in his
campaign. By now, however, we know that Walker says one thing during a campaign and then does something else after he's elected; and this should serve as a warning to Republican primary voters. He doesn't keep his promises.
What you get with Walker is government by surprise. Well, not so much "governing" either. It become more like imperial "ruling" than governing. Using his elected office to repay donors and batter real or imagined enemies.
Walker has serious problems back home which have worsened with him away. WEDC, his "job creation agency" is awash in corruption, the budget has turned into a carnival side show, and Republicans, who dominate the State Legislature, are bickering like toddlers over who gets to toss more goodies into the State Budget.
As terrible as Scott Walker has been as Governor of Wisconsin, his absence has created a leadership vacuum that far too many Republicans are fighting to fill. And that chaos is being noticed.
In the Sunday editiorial, they've finally remembered Walkers' campaign pledge last year that he "only wants to be Governor".
When he was running for re-election last year, he told a group of Journal Sentinel opinion writers and reporters that he really wanted to be Wisconsin's governor, and that he would act as such in his second term. He would actually govern. I don't think he's doing that; and that's certainly the perception of many in the public, who think he's running for president full-time. Maybe he's working behind the scenes, but if he is, it's so far back that no one knows he's there.
Walker wants the Presidency so badly that he's not even pretending to be Governor anymore. And when your media pals and supporters notice that, it isn't good.
Your media pals need you so come on back home, Governor. Fluffing you up is hard enough already considering how much damage you've done to the state. And the current evident corruption and mayhem make your media poodles have to work even harder.
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