Deadlock

 Fiscal Deadlocks Impede Progress

 

While the House GOP alt-right holds the country’s economy hostage refusing to authorize payment of the country’s bills in search of spending cuts that would gut President Biden’s progress and plans, their counterparts in Wisconsin recently voted to gut Governor Evers budget plans for the next two years.

 

Wisconsin’s legislative Joint Finance Committee, controlled by the gerrymandered GOP, recently took up Governor Evers proposed budget and promptly axed over 500 items, many of which are popular with a majority of voters across the state. 

 

Among the items removed from the budget process were proposals to legalize marijuana, create paid family leave, expand Medicaid eligibility, and pay for renovations to American Family Field, home of the Milwaukee Brewers. Also cut were proposals for a 10% income tax cut for middle- and low-income wage earners, $270 million for mental health providers in public schools, freezing enrollment in the private school voucher program, raising the minimum wage, starting an automatic voter registration program, and repealing Wisconsin’s so-called “Right to Work” law and Act 10 which stripped public sector unions of their ability to collectively bargain. 

 

The Joint Finance Committee also stripped proposals requiring legislators to keep their emails as public records, extending Milwaukee’s bar hours during the GOP’s national convention, subsidizing UW System tuition for low-income students, creating an office in the Wisconsin Elections Commission to deal with misinformation and open records requests, and rebuilding Wisconsin’s teacher workforce.

 

Other proposals cut from Evers’ budget proposal include funding for schools to replace racist school mascots, funding for school literacy and computer science programs, and requirements for schools to keep medications to reverse drug overdoses on hand. Joint Finance members also eliminated some of the proposed funding to deal with PFAS and other ground water contaminants found across the state. 

 

Trying to add more transparency to the legislative process, Evers proposed elimination of the anonymous objection process in the Joint Finance Committee by requiring legislators who block environmental stewardship proposals to be identified. The Committee deleted this one as well. 

 

Evers budget proposed spending some of the record $7 billion surplus on these and other voter popular items resulting in no need for raising taxes. 

 

After the Joint Finance Committee’s vote, liberal and progressive groups around the state pushed back by calling on Evers to veto the budget that the GOP controlled legislature will pass in its entirety while others urged a drastic use of Evers’ line-item veto to rewrite the GOP budget. 

 

The sausage making process for the state’s budget will continue into the Summer. Hopefully it will get finished by the end of the fiscal year in June. If it does not, then the state will continue to operate under the current budget until a new one is agreed upon.

 

Meanwhile in the nation’s capital, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy continues to struggle with holding his fragile coalition together as the country heads towards default on its debts. To get elected Speaker, McCarthy had to give more authority to the House Freedom caucus than he wanted, and the result sticks him with their demands for steep federal spending cuts to pass legislation raising the debt limit so we can pay bills for already incurred goods and services. 

 

The United States has never defaulted on its debts. The constitution requires the government pay its bills. If we default, economists across the political spectrum warn of dire economic consequences globally and at home while the administration listed a host of debts that won’t get paid starting June 1 if the debt limit is not raised by Congress. Included are the Social Security checks many of us depend upon for basic living necessities, services for veterans, maintenance on government infrastructure and a host of other government services everyday Americans depend on. 

 

A recent meeting of House and Senate leaders and President Biden showed McCarthy stands alone with the spending cut demands. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel indicated that he supports a clean debt limit bill without condition. Biden stands firm, refusing to negotiate about any conditions to raising the debt limit as every Congress has done before. He promised to talk about spending as part of budget negotiations while the House GOP cannot agree on what a budget they could pass might resemble. 

 

Several constitutional scholars have raised the idea that Biden can bypass Congress and pay the bills already incurred by executive authority under the Constitution. So far, Biden has resisted going that far into uncharted waters but hinted that it might be on the table. 

 

The political stalemates in Wisconsin and the nation’s capital do little to move us forward and do nothing but highlight how divided we have become. Governing a large population with different views has always been a challenge. Hopefully, our representatives will learn once more that compromise works better than winner take all.