Democracy could be found in Wisconsin this past week, but not among the screaming protesters running wild throughout the Wisconsin capitol. While Wisconsin’s elected representatives — minus 14 Democratic state senators who fled the state — were working hard on the job the people sent them to do, thousands of screaming protesters provided America with a preview of the union mobocracy coming soon to a legislature, city council or school board near you. State, county and city governments across the country might well find themselves facing the same confrontational tactics that caused havoc in Wisconsin. The reason is that public employee unions have used collective bargaining to extract generous salaries, pensions and other benefits from taxpayers who can no longer afford to pay for them. The unfunded liabilities for public employee pensions and health care benefits are estimated at $3 trillion, according to Orin S. Kramer, chairman of New Jersey’s State Investment Council. Voters are rebelling against public employee union demands that these inordinately lavish benefits be preserved by raising taxes, again, on the productive people in the economy, most of whom have far less lucrative benefits, if any at all. In Wisconsin, the projected deficit was $3.6 billion just for the next two years. That’s why last November voters there elected Gov. Scott Walker and new Republican majorities in the state legislature. When Walker unveiled his proposed budget cuts and reforms last month, the public employee unions initially demanded higher taxes on “the rich” instead. When Walker refused to raise taxes, government labor leaders agreed to pay a little more toward their benefits, but they also shifted the debate to the governor’s proposed reforms in the collective bargaining process that enabled the unions to expect overly generous benefits. Union leaders — who receive an estimated $100 million annually in compulsory membership dues that are paid with tax dollars — were especially aghast that Walker proposed making union membership and dues an elective rather than a required paycheck deduction. That’s when the protests moved away from fervent political speech and toward the kinds of systematic confrontation and violence reminiscent of the Students for a Democratic Society-inspired campus demonstrations of the 1960s.
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