David Brooks, the conservative columnist for The New York Times, is an elegant writer who’s usually worth reading. Last week, he wrote an intriguing piece, “The Paralysis of the State,” arguing that government benefits have gotten so rich, they have made it impossible for governments to do gigantic new projects, like the interstate highway system. Brooks called this “the Democratic Party’s epic failure.”
Whether rising benefits have led to governments suffering from “demosclerosis,” as Brooks (and Jonathan Rauch, who coined the term) would have it, is debatable: It doesn’t seem to have done this in European countries like Denmark and Germany, which have generous benefits. As for Brooks’ contention that it’s all the fault of Democrats and liberals, that’s dead wrong in Wisconsin.
In the late 1990s, as a roaring stock market drove up the value of the pension assets of the city of Milwaukee, Milwaukee County and the state of Wisconsin, there was tremendous pressure from government employees, retirees and politicians to cash in, increasing the payout to beneficiaries. This was a completely unjustified idea, since employees get a guaranteed payout, no matter how much the market dipped in value, so why should they get more when the market was (temporarily as it turned out) high?
The only one who opposed this fleecing of the taxpayers (who will ultimately pay for all the pension sweeteners) was a Democrat, then-Milwaukee mayor John Norquist. In Madison, Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson worked with unions and a bipartisan majority of legislators to pass a juicy and expensive increase in pension payments that benefitted government workers throughout the state. The lifetime value of Thompson’s already generous pension, for instance, grew by $111,000 as a result of passing the 1999 law.
In Milwaukee County, whose politicians run in nonpartisan elections, an outrageous pension plan (enabling hundreds of retiring employees to leave with $250,000 to $1 million apiece in lump-sum payments, plus a generous annual pension) was crafted by Democrats like Tom Ament, but passed by liberals and conservatives alike on the County Board.
Norquist fought an alliance of retirees, Milwaukee’s police union and others anxious to dip into the city’s pension plan, but lost on some parts of the battle because of questionable court decisions. As he has argued, judges who get endorsed by the police unions often get the endorsement not for their stand on crime but more because they signal their support for better benefits for the police.
Republicans have always supported police unions (who have traditionally gotten the most generous benefits) and have often been sympathetic to state legislation that would force the city of Milwaukee to offer yet more benefits to the police and fire unions (which typically tag along).
The biggest reason why both parties like to hike up benefits is quite simple: The benefits are always written for all government workers, including legislators and county supervisors, the governor and his cabinet members. And should anyone appeal the plan, as happened to the sweetener Thompson got passed, it goes to the courts: The plan was approved by the state’s Supreme Court, whose members all benefitted from it (but liberals Shirley Abrahamson and Ann Walsh Bradley dissented).
The second reason both parties have rolled over for increased benefits is that they often amount to a stealth hike; the politician declares that he/she has held the line on salary hikes in negotiations, while quietly hiking benefits whose arcane formulas bore the media and get little coverage. This has always been a winning strategy for Democrats and Republicans alike.
The principle is the same at the federal level, where senators and representatives come along for the ride when pensions and health insurance and other benefits are given to average employees. (How many federal politicians of either party have chosen not to accept these benefits?)
Are Democrats more sympathetic to government benefits than Republicans? Perhaps. Thompson, for instance, made an enemy of the state teachers unions and did get legislation passed to put a clamp on teacher salaries. But he meanwhile befriended the state employees union and drove up the number of employees. It was his Democratic successor, Gov. Jim Doyle, who worked with some success to cut back the government payroll.
The reality is that both parties like these benefits. And as long as all politicians are part of the payout, cutting back won’t be so easy.
Forget Science, JS Declares
A Friday story by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel looked at the respective positions of the two gubernatorial candidates, Democrat Tom Barrett and Republican Scott Walker, on embryonic stem cells. Walker would ban all research using them, he has told abortion opponents.
Walker has waffled as to whether he could ban just state or federal funding of this. The stakes are high. UW’s Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which has spun off a growing biotech industry, depends heavily on embryonic stem cells. WARF has estimated that fully 350 of its 1,000 licensing agreements involve these cells.
Walker has contended that embryonic stem cells aren’t needed because of the potential afforded by adult stem cells. So what do scientists say about this? Timothy Kamp, director of UW’s Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine Center, told the JS this: “Right now, the scientific evidence in my mind is favoring the embryonic stem cells.”
Then, absurdly, the JS quotes Susan Armacost, legislative director for Wisconsin Right to Life, who says there have been “zero benefits shown for embryonic stem cells” and this research is no longer needed.
This is balanced reporting? You get a scientist on one side and a nonscientist and polemical advocate on the other side to make a claim to the contrary?
I can only assume the reporters couldn’t find a scientist to agree that adult cells had the same potential as embryonic cells, so they threw in Armacost for some spurious balance. The end result suggests to readers, quite misleadingly, that these are just opinions, that there are no facts in this dispute. It calls to mind Daniel Moynihan’s famous dictum, that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
The Buzz
-Wisconsin will move to embrace nuclear power no matter who becomes governor. NewsBuzz reports.
-The battle for the soul of the Journal Sentinel continues. Managing Editor George Stanley and his team of news editors have seen no need to report the fact that Republican candidate for lieutenant governor Rebecca Kleefisch has refused to debate her Democratic opponent. But Editorial Page Editor O. Ricardo Pimentel has stepped into the breach, publishing an editorial demanding she debate, and running an op-ed by Steven Walters calling for a debate. That’s laudable, but as I’ve long noted, it’s the front page and state/local page of the newspaper that set the agenda for the state: The blackout on reporting this story sends the signal that the lack of any debate is not news.
-Pressroom Buzz explains how some news orgs are in it for love, not money, and they’re turning heads.
-And the Sports Nut credits Wisconsin’s upset of Ohio State to, I kid you not, a kicker from an entirely different team.
