Two years ago the Capitol press corps and the state punditry insisted a “late” budget was a terrible thing. So are we happy yet?
I miss gridlock
By
Dustin Beilke
Bill Berry’s FightingBob.com article about this year’s early state budget settlement and the news that some public schools are looking at a 15 percent cut in state funding have me pining for the good old days of the 2007 state budget debate. That was the one, you might remember, that virtually every editorial page editor and state government reporter in the state lamented for its paralyzing partisan gridlock.
Near the end of the 2007 “stalemate,” former Democratic Assembly representative/Republican department secretary/health care executive (!) Tim Cullen wrote a widely circulated column for the Wisconsin State Journal in which he blamed the stalled budget on the party leaders’ ideological extremism and mutual unwillingness to compromise. The same basic formulation was presented by countless other editorialists and Capitol observers then and since.
At the time, the Assembly was controlled by Republicans and the Senate and governor’s office were in Democratic hands. As months went by with the budget conference committee barely even meeting the Capitol press corps wrote incessantly about gridlock, partisanship, and the twin curse of “partisan gridlock.”
Apart from whatever else Ross Perot’s 1992 presidential campaign brought us, the constant refrain about the scourge of gridlock between Democrats and Republicans is the most enduring and annoying. Annoying because it mostly isn’t true, and enduring, I suspect, because saying it is so much easier than figuring out what is really going on.
It wasn’t ideology that delayed the state budget settlement in 2007. The two sides weren’t meeting because the Republican Assembly leaders knew the press and punditry would carp about partisan gridlock if the budget wasn’t settled quickly. The myth of gridlock, then, became the centerpiece of the GOP’s budget strategy and actually gave its leaders a reason not to pass a budget. Democrats eventually acquiesced to some of the Republicans’ wishes because they were tired of getting hammered in the press about their partisanship and their role in the dreaded gridlock. The media’s lunatic obsession effectively leveled the playing field.
If gridlock were true it would mean that the best answers can be found somewhere between the two dominant political parties. But the best answers lie outside of the parties; not to the left and right so much as east, west, north and south. In a world of Clintonian triangulation, marketing communications strategies and right-wing radio personalities like Charlie Sykes, political debates are where good ideas go to die.
Now that Democrats have the Assembly, the Senate and the governor’s office, the budget was settled earlier than it had been since 1977 and we no longer hear about the scourge of gridlock. Indeed, we no longer hear about much of anything.
Instead, the Democrats balanced the budget on their own before the 4th of July. Several Republicans sent out press releases complaining about taxing-and-spending, but one gets the sense that they are saving their best lines for the 2010 election postcards. And the press mostly ignores everyone because it mostly ignores state government in general. Without gridlock, it seems, the press can’t find anything to write about.
Meanwhile, we have a state budget that slashes school funding, lays off and furloughs state employees, and generally does less of everything that anyone would want it to do. Is this progress?
If partisan warfare and ideological extremism would bring us a real discussion about why we have government, why we live together in communities, and why we should or should not pool our resources and invest in our shared future, then I’m all for it. Let’s have some real gridlock and not the phony kind.
July 28, 2009
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Dustin Beilke is a FightingBob.com contributing editor who lives in Madison.
