Cutting government spending isn’t easy, either at state or national levels. Take Wisconsin, for example. It faces a $137 million deficit this fiscal year and a $3.6 billion deficit over the next two years. But on Thursday, Wisconsin Senate Democrats reportedly fled the state rather than provide a quorum to vote for a bill that would cut the cost of the public-sector work force and enable the sale of state-owned power plants. Proposed by Gov. Scott Walker, a newly elected Republican, the bill would require public-sector employees to pay half their pension contributions and 12.6 percent of health insurance premiums, modest sums compared with those paid by private-sector workers.
In addition, the bill would limit collective bargaining rights for state workers, with the exception of police, firefighters and state troopers. It would not only end salary deductions for union dues, but would allow government workers to stop paying dues altogether and remain members of collective bargaining units.
Once the bill passes the Republican-controlled Senate and Assembly, it heads to Walker’s desk for a signature.
Although Republicans have majorities in both chambers, a quorum of three-fifths of members is necessary for budget bills. One Democratic senator is needed for the vote, and Republican Senate President Mike Ellis on Thursday sent police to collect absent Democrats.
Wisconsin elected its governor and representatives to cut the budget, and that’s what they’re doing. Taxpayers cannot continue to carry the burden of an overpaid public sector.
Would that President Obama were following Wisconsin’s example. But his $3.7 trillion budget request for fiscal 2012, which will begin Oct. 1, results in a $1.1 trillion deficit in 2012 and a $1.6 billion gap in 2011. It suggests few cuts in discretionary spending and no cuts in entitlements.
President Obama says that spending cuts are needed, so why not get started immediately with outlays in fiscal 2011, now almost five months old?
The House of Representatives, under new Republican leadership, including Wisconsin’s House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, has proposed a 2011 “continuing resolution” that would be $100 billion below the level requested by Obama a year ago in his 2011 budget request.
Nevertheless, the White House said Obama would veto the Republican bill now on the House floor, without proposing any 2011 spending cuts of his own.
This is not the House Republican budget for 2012 in which conservatives hope to slash outlays even further. By law, Congress has until April 15 to submit a budget resolution — although the deadline often slips, and in 2011 Congress never submitted it.
Republicans’ proposed $100 billion cuts for the rest of 2011 include $5 billion from agriculture, $14 billion from defense, $24 billion from the Labor Department, $4 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency, $16 billion from transportation.
Saving that much money from March 4 to Sept. 30 would be a significant retrenchment, apart from entitlements.
Some programs would be cut that few Americans know exist, such as Exchanges with Historic Whaling Partners; Education for Native Hawaiians; Ready-to-Learn Television; and EPA-targeted air-shed grants. Others might better be controlled by individual states, such as Housing Counseling Assistance, Assistance to Small Shipyards, and the National Writing Project.
Admittedly, these cost mere millions, small beer in a multitrillion-dollar budget, but former Congresses have allowed such programs to grow without limit.
The source of the problem: Most politicians, at the state and national levels, don’t propose spending cuts because they fear disapproval from voters whose oxen are gored — seniors, farmers, anyone else who loses.
But if federal and state governments, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, fail to show leadership to trim expenditures, America is on the path to fiscal ruin.
Examiner Columnist Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
