American democracy, as first conceived, was a new way of running government.?? As opposed to a parliamentary chamber, we proved that powers could be separated among branches and not just work, but work well.
Something worth studying is how government gets along when divided between parties.?? In New York, two-thirds majorities of opposite parties have existed for decades.??They actually get along quite well.?? Wisconsin has its own divided government, and it's been a disaster.
Last year, when the Democrats took the governor's mansion and the Republicans took control of the legislature, some wondered about how it would work out.
Reading the newspapers in Wisconsin, several times a month one sees a headline like one on WisPolitics.com Tuesday:?? \Assembly Fails to Override Doyle Veto on Felon Bill 63-36.2""?? The first such battle involved a bill to stop the expansion of gambling, and there have been more since then.
The most contentious fight was over a statewide property tax freeze, legislative Republicans proposing to slash revenue to municipalities and then forbidding them from making up the difference. Nobody ever got past the demagoguery to compare this to states with similar laws.?? California enacted Proposition 13, their own property tax control, 25 years ago.?? Since then, the traditional jobs of local government have just kept on shifting upward toward the state level.?? State spending went up over time while local governments kept spending money they no longer had to raise.?? Apparently the Republicans think we should be run like California. We already have a budget mess and recalls left and right.
A battle that is now on deck involves a concealed weapons law.?? Everybody knows Governor Doyle will veto it, and everyone knows one house of the legislature or another will end up sustaining the veto. This doesn't stop its proponents from pursuing this, though.??
In fact, it only emboldens them to pursue a futile crusade to rewrite the state's laws and score some political points off the whole thing.
What's really curious about this new right-wing push is not that they're doing it, but when they started doing it. They didn't begin any of this until they lost the governor's mansion.?? If this stuff were so important to them, they would have done it while they were in power.
The fact is they're not doing this to actually pass laws, only to campaign for them.?? If they'd tried to pass a concealed weapons law while they were in power, and actually passed it, they would have lost seats in the legislature over the controversy.?? Repeated failure motivates their base without producing a similar grassroots reaction across the aisle. For example, right after state Senator Bob Welch started this chase for a property tax freeze, he used his notoriety to launch a U.S. Senate campaign.
Legislative power is no longer used to legislate, not to solve any problems, but only to create them. The Republicans were emboldened after a special election victory for the Assembly over the summer. The property tax freeze was a major issue, so now they feel that they have a mandate to pursue this course of constant vetoes and attempted overrides.??Picking up one Assembly seat doesn't actually change a thing, though, as the Senate was the one Doyle relied on to uphold vetoes on close votes.
Who wins from all this' Political consultants win, for one, as they get more work and more exciting work at that. The people who lose are you and me.?? The state still has a structural deficit to deal with next year, while politicians are chasing after each other coming up with plans to make it worse, just so they can win more votes along the way. The elections are in November 2004, but the budget is a mess right now. If they don't get serious about fixing things, this state is in a lot of trouble.
