You'll be hearing a lot about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as he mulls a potential run for the presidency, then a heckuva lot more if he decides in the affirmative.
Much of the venting from the left about Walker will be outright falsehoods, such as this deceitful claim by liberal radio host Stephanie Miller on her program Tuesday. Miller, ranked number 22 among radio talk hosts in 2014 (right after Alan Colmes) by trade publication Talkers Magazine, is perhaps better known as the youngest daughter of the late William E. Miller, Barry Goldwater's running mate in the '64 campaign.
During a discussion with producer Chris Lavoie about this past weekend's Iowa Freedom Summit that drew a dozen-plus potential GOP candidates, Miller played a clip of Walker's remarks at the summit and added her less than two cents' worth (audio) --
WALKER: We need leaders in America who understand, who ultimately understand, the measure of success in government is not how many people are dependent on the government. The measure of success in government is how many people are no longer dependent on the government.
MILLER: Oh, and how many union workers no longer have their pensions or their benefits because, aha, I question ...
LAVOIE: Yeah.
MILLER: OK. Ah, right. Wowee.
LAVOIE: Benefits that they were promised and that they paid into ...
MILLER: Right.
LAVOIE: ... that they no longer have.
MILLER: Right, and it's part of the deal when you take a job is, you know, if you take less pay because, how you were promised those benefits ...
LAVOIE: Right.
MILLER: ... until Scott Walker ...
Agreed, it's barely coherent, but crystalline by Miller's standards. What she's saying at the end of the clip is anyone's guess but her insinuation right out of the gate is clear -- that union workers lost their pensions and benefits under Walker.
To flatter this as a half-truth would be generous. First of all, Act 10, the legislation signed by Walker shortly after he took office in January 2011, affected only municipal unions and not those in the private sector. Moreover, unionized police and firefighters were not included, a compromise needed to pass the bill into law.
The measure contained key provisions that affected the pensions and health insurance of government workers. Don't take it from me, here's how they're described in that infamous union-hating right-wing rag, the New York Times. In a February 2014 story headlined "Wisconsin's Legacy for Unions," Steven Greenhouse wrote --
Act 10, which still faces court challenges from unions, has generally required public employees to start contributing 6 percent of their pay toward their pensions and at least 12 percent of their health plan costs. For many employees, that meant a 12 percent pay cut; on top of that, many faced a multiyear pay freeze.
Hmm, how is it that public workers would start paying into their pensions if they "no longer" had them ...?
Prior to Act 10, taxpayers paid nearly $1.4 billion annually for state pensions compared to a paltry $8 million contributed by public workers, according to the MacIver Institute think tank in Wisconsin. The law also ended an often abused provision that allowed municipal employees to get paid time and a half on the next shift after a sick day. Collective bargaining for public workers was limited to base pay only and no longer extended to health coverage, pensions, sick time, safety or vacations.
It is true that many public workers saw their benefits reduced after Act 10 became law -- since the state faced a $3.6 billion budget deficit when Walker took office and budget cuts were needed to avoid massive layoffs. Last summer the state's highest court upheld the legality of the law, only a month after the state finished fiscal 2014 with a $517 million surplus. The law provided municipalities and school districts with badly needed flexibility in managing budgets, reining in health care and pension costs, and weeding out unproductive employees who could previously count on unblinking union support.
Act 10 ignited a visceral response on the left, provoking huge sit-in protests at the state capitol in Madison and the birth of what later came to be known as the Occupy movement. Opponents also launched a recall campaign against Walker in 2012 that fell short, and he was re-elected last November -- his third victory at the polls in four years.
Another key provision of Act 10 -- public workers were no longer required to pay union dues. The result -- revenue to municipal unions has plummeted. The formidable American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), saw its funding drop 45 percent in 2012, the first full year the law was in effect, from only a year earlier, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Membership in public-sector unions has also plunged. The largest teachers' union in Wisconsin lost roughly a third of its members, from 98,000 to 60,000, after Act 10 took effect, according to Forbes. The AFSCME local in Madison -- the nation's first for a public-sector union -- saw its membership nearly evaporate from 1,000 to 122, according to the Times' Greenhouse. The chance for 300,000 public workers to save $1,000-plus in annual union dues probably had something to do with it.
"So public employee unions now have to persuade -- not compel -- people to join their ranks," editorialized The Weekly Standard in June 2012, just before Walker prevailed in the recall election.
That argument becomes especially difficult without collective bargaining. If the union no longer has the power to win gold-plated pension and health benefits, why would the average teacher choose to spend a chunk of his or her earnings to become a member? Without that misbegotten money, public employee unions lose their power. There's a reason public sector unions are fighting as if their existence depends on this. It might.
Liberals love invoking the sanctity of unions, but even Democrat patron saint Franklin Roosevelt believed that unionizing public workers made for bad public policy. It was in Wisconsin that unions first made the leap from private to public and it's in Wisconsin again, under Walker, that the tide may have been reversed.
