Once upon a time the Wisconsin Legislature helped working people and set an example for the rest of the nation to follow. Can it ever be like that again?
A tale of two Legislatures
By
Rep. Spencer Black
It sounds like one of those good news/bad news jokes. The good news: The Legislature’s 2003-04 session is finally over. The bad news: John Gard is threatening to call the Legislature back for the TABOR constitutional amendment which would lock in place corporate tax breaks and decimate state and local services.
I think most Wisconsin citizens would conclude that they would have been better off had the Legislature left town many months ago. Approaching my 20th year in the state Assembly, I cannot remember a worse legislative session. I have never seen a session where wedge issues were driven in so deep, special interests cashed in so often, and the rest of us were left so completely out in the cold. There was a time when legislators would walk away from a legislative session with pride, pointing to accomplishments in health care, workers rights, education and environmental protection. There was a time when the nation looked to the Wisconsin Legislature for progressive policy initiatives. Those days are gone.
The 2003-04 session was defined by its fixation with issues that matter little to the average citizen. The John Gard-run Assembly did not consider legislation intended to improve the lives of working families – but instead was obsessed with wedge issues whose major aim is to produce fodder for 30-second campaign ads. Legislation was cleverly named to sound good (and the press often repeated the name for legislative bills cooked up by GOP spinmasters without even using the preface “so called”). Yet the bills rarely did what they claimed to do: The so-called “Jobs Creation Bill” did not create a single job, the so-called “Defense of Marriage Bill” (supported, ironically, by legislators who had dozens of divorces between them) did not defend a single marriage, and the so-called “Taxpayer Bill of Rights” would lock in place our current unfair tax system that screws the average taxpayer while letting corporations enjoy tax break after tax break.
Somehow, with a struggling economy, budget crisis and other urgent matters demanding attention, the Legislature’s Republican majority found time to put prohibiting same sex marriage at the top of the agenda even though it is already prohibited in Wisconsin. Making it easier to take guns into schools and harder for low-income women to get into health clinics were also high on the Republican to-do list. So were selling off state parks and wildlife areas and raising tuition by a whooping 35 percent at the University of Wisconsin.
While Governor Doyle vetoed some of the more egregious products of the Legislature, in other cases Republicans found Doyle a willing partner in handing out special interest favors that would have made even Tommy Thompson blush. Items that languished on the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (the big business lobby) wish list for years found new life with a governor willing to pay a high price for the title “pro-business Democrat.” Doyle and the Republican Legislature combined to give WMC hundreds of millions of dollars in new corporate tax breaks and presided over a poorly conceived deregulation bill that will undermine both environmental and consumer protection. And while he tried to make the best of the fiscal train wreck he inherited, Doyle embraced a budget deficit fix that caused far more pain for Jane Lunchbucket than for Joe Millionaire.
It is hard to say which is worse – what this Legislature did, or what it did not do. It offered no help for working families stuck with 20 percent health insurance premium increases; no property tax relief for seniors on fixed incomes or young homeowners just starting out; no support for our under-funded public schools, and no reform of our corrupt campaign finance system. Opportunity after opportunity was squandered.
How do we find ourselves in such a sorry state? When did the Wisconsin Legislature – once renowned as a laboratory for innovation – become little more than a dispensary of corporate handouts and campaign sound bites? Is there any hope for change?
The Legislature’s turn for the worse has a lot to do with money. Legislative races that used to cost $20,000 now can cost more than a million bucks. The rising cost of running for office created a need cheerfully filled by the special interest groups that patrol the Capitol seeking favors by day and show up at campaign fundraisers handing out rewards by night. The working person who cannot cut a $5,000 or $10,000 check to a legislative leader is ignored while special interests can name their price: tax breaks, corporate welfare, or deregulation. That is why real campaign finance reform that would get the big money out of state elections is the most important change needed to reverse the decline in the Legislature. Sadly, despite the scandals and felony indictments swirling around the Capitol, both Republican legislative leaders and Governor Jim Doyle let campaign finance reform languish.
The Assembly was once a place where ideas counted for more than money - a place known for real debate on the real issues of the day. In his recent eulogy for Paul Offner, a leading state Senator of the early 1980’s, former speaker Tom Loftus recalled that “The state Assembly was a place where debate changed votes.” Loftus liked to say (with just a bit of exaggeration) that the state Assembly of his day called to mind “Athenian democracy at its zenith.”
Oh how the mighty have fallen. This year, during debate on the marriage constitutional amendment, the GOP author refused to even be seen on the Assembly floor, much less debate the merit of his amendment. Today, debate is feared. Republicans routinely gavel dissenting Democrats into silence, rule their amendments out of order, and throw their own rulebook out the window when convenient. Comparing the speakership of Tom Loftus to that of John Gard is like comparing the singing of Pavarotti to that of a first round loser on “American Idol.” No wonder Republican leaders continue to delay Wisconsin Eye’s statewide broadcast of the legislative proceedings.
Well, what is the answer? Legislative Democrats have to stake out and articulate a progressive alternative to the Republican agenda, even if it means that some special interest lobbyists will be less likely to write those campaign checks. Being “Republican Lite” will not give people a reason to change the Legislature. Democrats who are content merely going through the motions of providing a polite but ineffectual opposition will not lead us back to the majority.
Legislative Democrats must focus on the grass roots, showing the average person why it matters who controls the Legislature. When WMC gets its agenda of weakening environmental protection and more corporate tax breaks through with the support of Democratic legislative leaders and a Democratic governor, it is harder to articulate a reason for change. Yet, every swipe the Republican Legislature has taken at our schools, our communities, our natural resources and our fundamental Wisconsin values has given more people reason to demand change.
FightingBob.com editor and publisher Ed Garvey recently asked me how I can stand being in the Legislature these days. Recalling when the Wisconsin Legislature actually passed bills that benefited the average person and made life better in our state makes a sad contrast with the present state of affairs, but also reminds me of why the fight is worth making. Our environment is cleaner, our schools are better, and our social services are more humane because of the work done in legislative sessions in the not so distant past. It is a fight worth waging and winning.
May 4, 2004
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Spencer Black is the representative for the 77th Assembly District in Madison. He is the Democratic Leader on the Assembly Natural Resources Committee, and is the author of the Stewardship Fund, the Mining Moratorium, and the Recycling Law.
