Smaller Government

 Smaller Government is Not the Answer

 

Republicans usually believe in smaller government and less governmental intrusion into people’s lives. Unfortunately, that philosophy has taken the GOP controlled Wisconsin legislature to an extremely unproductive and dangerous place. Wisconsin’s legislature is now considered the least active full-time state legislature in the nation since the Covid-19 pandemic started and Wisconsin has become one of the worst states in the nation for virus spread.

 

A review by WisPolitics, a Wisconsin based news service that covers state politics, shows that our legislators have met 18 times less frequently that the other states with full time legislatures since March 12 when Gov. Evers declared the first public health emergency. 

 

With Covid cases increasing at rates faster than most other states, our hospital intensive care beds being filled to capacity and virus deaths topping 1500, our legislature has refused calls to convene in extra ordinary session to address the pandemic. 

 

Gov. Evers has tried to stem the spread of the virus with mandates for Wisconsinites to mask up and orders limiting capacity in public places where people gather only to find legislative leaders and representatives of the Tavern League take his orders to court challenging his authority. He has had to set up a large field hospital at State Fair Park to ease the burden on state hospital intensive care wards. 

 

Assembly Leader Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald have ignored the governor’s call to work with him to formulate a plan to deal with the virus and hospital system overloads. They have continued to assert that only the legislature has the power to approve public health emergency orders without doing so or offering any other alternative plans to deal with the crisis. They reject the need for state wide uniform action, leaving the decisions to local health departments and county units of government. 

 

This legislative abdication of responsibility has led to a hodgepodge of local orders limited to city or county boundaries. We now have cities with mask mandates and public space limitations right next door to other municipalities with none. Literally, we find streets where masks are required on one side, but not the other. Unfortunately, the virus does not honor geopolitical boundaries.

 

Washington county has been hit especially hard. Our health department notes that our communities are carrying a very high burden of virus case increases with an upward trending trajectory for new cases and a very high case status. All these point to more cases, hospitalizations and deaths in our future. Our county leadership counts itself among the GOP far right where decisions about wearing masks, gathering in large groups with little physical distancing and other precautionary measures are matters of “individual responsibility” even when the numbers show far too many do not take that “responsibility” seriously, if at all. 

 

When the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Gov. Evers’ first order in response to the legislature’s lawsuit, lawmakers claimed in their arguments to the Court that they were “ready willing, and able to work with DHS and at the same time craft legislation (which it is drafting even now) to respond to the pandemic in a comprehensive and balanced fashion and guided by federal recommendations.” Since that was submitted to the Court back in April, nothing of the sort has emerged from the Legislature.

 

Clearly, calls for people to voluntarily follow federal CDC and local health department recommendations have not worked to slow the spread of this deadly virus. Legislative inaction and court intervention have certainly contributed to virus spread and more deaths. 

 

It is time for new leadership that takes the current pandemic for what it is, an indiscriminate killer, and responds with what the epidemiologists and other infectious disease experts tell us are the steps necessary to get it under control. Only when these measures are required and enforced at every level will we see the economy start to rebound, schools open safely for children and staff and the health of the nation recover. 

 

We’ve done it before and can do it again. It just takes courage.