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发帖数: 29846 | 1 By Karin McQuillan
Democrats say that government can create jobs through borrowing, printing
money and spending. They warn that trimming bureaucrats from payrolls will
be an economic disaster. Republicans argue that the bigger the government
is, the smaller the private sector. The Tea Party prescription: shrink
government, lower taxes, decrease regulation, and the economy will rebound
through private enterprise.
"Facts are hard to argue with," Governor Walker of Wisconsin declared in a
Heritage interview earlier this month. In the three years before his
election, the Democratic State legislature and Democratic governor presided
over the loss of 150,000 jobs. In Walker's first six months in office,
Wisconsin added a net of 39,000 jobs, including 14,000 in manufacturing. The
remainder were in agriculture, tourism, biotech and medical technology.
In June, Walker earned boasting rights that half of the new jobs in the
entire country -- a shocking and paltry 19,000 -- were created in his state.
In the same month, Democrat Illinois next door lost 7,000 jobs. (For more
on Illinois jobs, see this - ed.)
Not only did Wisconsin add private sector jobs, they trimmed government jobs
by 3,000. Instead of leading to disaster, 12,500 private jobs were added,
leading to the one month total of 9,500 net new jobs.
What changed for Wisconsin? Republican policies made the dramatic
difference. In his first six months, Governor Walker and his Republican
legislature passed tort reform and regulatory reform to create a legal
system that fosters economic growth instead of suffocating it. They
balanced the budget and cut taxes, including freezing property taxes. To
encourage business expansion, they passed a manufacturing tax credit and
capital gains tax credit.
The cuts were not at the expense of the health and senior services. The
budget continues BadgerCare, Medical Assistance, and SeniorCare, and
allocates an additional $1.2 billion into the state's Medicaid program.
All new revenue in the next two years will go to the Department of Health
Services.
The budget did cut $800 million in aid to local school districts. However,
the Republicans freed school districts of onerous union requirements that
expensive health insurance must be purchased through the union. School
districts quickly turned to the competitive private insurance market and
have saved as much as $700,000 a year.
Shrinking government is impossible without taking on the public sector
unions. Walker gained national media coverage with his challenge to the
public union scam: non-voluntary union dues from government workers are paid
into Democrat coffers to elect officials that negotiate give-away contracts
at a ruinous cost to the taxpayers. Government salaries and benefits are
60% of the taxpayer burden. Teacher benefit to salary ratio was running
three times higher than the private sector. In Milwaukee, $100,000 teacher
compensation packages were bankrupting the school system, leading to layoffs
of hundreds of teachers, and explosion in class size to an estimated 34
students. Reforming collective bargaining was essential to protect
taxpayers and Wisconsin's schoolchildren.
Wisconsin Republicans won a historic victory over this extortion racket of
public sector unions. We all remember the famous February demonstrations
and the flight of Democrat legislators. Despite the media circus, the
Republicans passed a law that requires union members to contribute 12.6
percent toward health insurance premiums and 5.8 percent of their salaries
toward their pensions. They had been paying nothing. Nationwide, in the
private sector, the average contribution is 20% by employees for their
health insurance and 8% towards their pension.
John McCormack, writing for The Weekly Standard, describes the beneficial
effects of this single Republican reform. Case in point, the Brown Deer
school district had been negotiating unsuccessfully with the local union to
cope with a $1 million budget shortfall.
"We laid off 27 [teachers] as a precautionary measure," Koczela told Walker.
"They were crying. Some of these people are my friends."
Republican reforms allowed the school district to save $600,000 by teachers
paying 5.8% towards their pensions. Changes such as a $10 doctor's visit co-
pay (up from nothing) saved $200,000. Increasing the workload from
five classes to six saved another $200,000. The budget was balanced. None
of the changes affected the children. 27 teachers' jobs were saved.
The Pittsfield school district made up their shortfall and reduced property
taxes by 9 percent. The Kaukauna school district turned a $400,000 deficit
into a $1.5 million surplus. They plan to decrease class size, offer Chinese
and Arabic, and offer more Advanced Placement classes. Children and
taxpayers were the winners, and no teachers were laid off. The limitation
on public sector unions' collective bargaining was the key to fiscal
responsibility.
While Walker was taking on the teacher's unions, in neighbouring Democrat
Illinois, the top school administrators get to retire at age 56 with a
lifetime pension worth almost $9,000,000 each. Neil C. Codell of the Niles
High School District (a suburb of Chicago) gets a salary of $885,327 and his
pension is valued at $26,661,604. While Republicans were balancing the
Wisconsin budget, Illinois has run up a $13,000,000,000 (yes that's billions
) deficit. While Republican Wisconsin added jobs, the Illinois unemployment
rate has been rising for three months, and stands at 9.5%. 33% of blacks
age 20-24 have no jobs.
Obama's prescription, the famous stimulus, was wasted in Democrat-run
Wisconsin by using it to pay the bloated public sector benefits for a single
year. 80% of the $701 million federal stimulus funds Wisconsin received in
2009 went to public union workers. The cost to the taxpayer was $82,000
per job. Wisconsin lost 118,000 jobs despite the Democrat spending. By
July of 2011, the state had received another billion dollars, and the White
House's stimulus tracking website was boasting less than 5,000 workers were
employed as a result. That's costing taxpayers $2 million per job. How
could it be this bad? Because government spending doesn't grow an economy.
Ozaukee County's transit service used $600,000 dollars to buy nine new
shared ride taxis, five minibuses and 22 mobile GPS systems. Jobs created:
zero. The City of Racine got $800,000 in stimulus money and used it to put
in energy efficient LED streetlights, hiring an unemployed electrician to
install them. The $800,000 amounted to one temporary job. The University of
Wisconsin received 2 million dollars and created 3.7 jobs, at more than
half a million dollar per job. No wonder our country is going broke.
How did Illinois do with the Democratic prescription for government stimulus
as the best and only way to create jobs? A mere $170 million was allocated
to highway construction, the most in the country and double the next state,
Iowa. Three quarters of the stimulus, $2.9 billion, was used to pay
Medicare reimbursements that the state had not been able to pay for years,
leading to no new jobs. The state claimed the creation of 15,000 jobs, the
most in the nation. Yet in the two months of February- March 2009, Illinois
lost 40,000 jobs. In the twelve months of the 2009 tax year, they lost 230
,000 jobs, a loss of 11%. Despite the self-congratulation by Democrats on
their stimulus policy, Illinois ranks 48th in the nation in job growth. The
Democrats are hard put to point to any growth in the private sector. In
Chicago, the list of funded projects reads like philanthropy, not economic
growth:
$270,000 for the study of 'intergalactic gas' at the University of
Chicago. No jobs were created
$462,000 to study sharks at the University of Chicago. No new jobs
$85,000 study on how parents contribute to their children's obesity,
Northwestern University. No jobs
$500,000 to a private company for work on 'finger-tapping technology'
for use on cell phones
$611,000 to the University of Illinois to study if stress makes people
drink more
Democrat Illinois has a $13 billion deficit and passed a 66% state income
tax increase in January. People are suffering, education is suffering, the
economic situation appears hopeless.
Wisconsin's nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimates Republican
Wisconsin will finish the two-year budget with a $300 million surplus. They
lowered classroom size and funded health care, created jobs and cut taxes.
Their economy is on an upswing.
It's not rocket science. Ordinary Republican ideas for job growth work in
the real world. America has enormous economic muscle. We just need to get
the 800 pound government gorilla off our back. |
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