In an interview with The Washington Examiner in February, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said of his upcoming recall election, “I think when we prevail, it will ultimately send a message not only in Madison, my statehouse, but in state capitals all across the country that if you run an aggressive campaign, you come into office and tackle the tough issues, you do what voters expect you to do, which is to make tough decisions that think more about the next generation than the next election, that there will be people standing there with you.”
As he predicted, Walker did prevail on Tuesday, fending off a union-financed recall challenge from Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Now it’s time for politicians at the local, state and federal levels to follow his example.
After taking office last year in a blue state, Walker set out to close a $3.6 billion budget hole, in part by reforming public-sector unions. His reforms curbed union collective bargaining powers that were crippling local governments’ budgets. This sparked a wave of protests in Madison. Democratic state senators fled the state as part of a desperate legislative maneuver intended to block the reforms. And unions tried to challenge his policies in court.
But Walker stood firm, and his reforms went into effect. The results have been impressive. Not only was he able to close the budget gap without raising taxes, but property taxes — which had risen every year since 1998 — actually went down.
Under Walker’s reforms, school districts were able to save money by negotiating for health care plans, giving schools more resources and avoiding expected teacher layoffs. As the academic year wore on, parents across Wisconsin came to realize that none of the unions’ dire warnings about the impact of Walker’s reforms were true. A Marquette Law School poll of Wisconsin voters released last week found that 75 percent favored increasing public employee contributions to health and retirement benefits, and 55 percent said they “favored limiting collective bargaining for most public employees.”
The fact that Walker was able to implement such reforms in a state that President Obama won by 14 points in 2008, and ultimately win popular acceptance after an initially fierce backlash, is a landmark accomplishment. It means that governors in states throughout the nation should no longer be afraid to take on public-sector unions. The unions may make a lot of noise and issue plenty of threats, but in the end they just don’t have the muscle they once had. At a time when most states are strapped for cash, there’s no reason elected officials should allow big labor to maintain a stranglehold over budgets.
But Walker’s victory is about more than just unions. He has demonstrated that voters ultimately reward politicians who show political courage on the big issues, if they only have the resolve to see their policies implemented and watch them succeed.
As the United States faces a looming fiscal crisis due to prior generations’ unwillingness to tackle runaway spending on the entitlement programs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, wobbly-kneed politicians in Washington should look to Walker’s triumph in Wisconsin for inspiration.
