All of a sudden, the Midwest has joined the Mideast as one of the world's hot spots.
From Madison to Columbus to Indianapolis, protesters are out in force to try to stop governors or legislative leaders from enacting sweeping anti-union laws. As in the Mideast, the protests seems to ripple from state to state, in a sort of political domino effect. If the Midwest is not exactly in revolution, neither is it seeing politics as usual: in each state, the middle ground has vanished, and nothing short of capitulation, by one side or the other, seems likely.
The details are well-known by now. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, both newly-elected Republicans, propose legislation to severely restrict the ability of unions to represent public service workers, including teachers. In Indiana, a bill sponsored by Republican legislators would make Indiana a "right-to-work" state. In Indiana and Wisconsin, Democratic legislators have fled to Illinois to keep Republican majorities from enacting the bills.
The background also is well-known. All three states, like other Midwestern states, face budget deficits that must be closed. In each state, salaries of public service employees make up a big part of state spending. Sponsors of the legislation say it's necessary to hold this spending down, and one way to do this is to cripple the ability of public service unions to protect their member's salaries and benefits.
In each state, as in Washington, the GOP argues that it emerged from last November's mid-term elections with a mandate to slash deficits and cut spending. Whether or not this is really what the voters had in mind, there's no question that the winners have the political power to try to get this done, just as President Obama interpreted his election as a mandate for health care reform and used his political power to achieve it.
But if the health care bill sparked vocal opposition, the anti-union bills have touched off vivid action. State employees see basic rights at stake and are fighting back. Out-numbered Democrats are actually going into exile, like so many Mensheviks after the Russian revolution. It is clear that we are at a turning point in Midwestern politics. No one knows how this will turn out, but it's certain that nothing from now on will be the same.
At this stage, there are several points that need to be made.
First, this debate is only marginally about state deficits. Columnists like the New York Times' Paul Krugman, who accuse governors like Walker of using the deficit crisis for a naked power grab, are right (see articles here and here). Walker, who only recently has become a national figure, earned a reputation as the Milwaukee County chief executive as a fan of privatization of public services and a foe of both unions and of worker benefits.
In short, Walker arrived in Madison with an agenda and seems to be using the deficit as an excuse to achieve other long-term goals, including the evisceration of unions. The unions themselves already have agreed to Walker's proposals to cut the deficit by increasing workers' contributions to their pension and health plans, but the governor has rejected these concessions -- has rejected, in fact, even negotiations on the anti-union legislation.
(Not that Walker, who seems to answer his own phone, should be that hard to reach. Just this past week, he chatted away for 20 minutes with a prank caller whom he thought was David Koch, the anti-union and pro-Tea Party Kansas billionaire who is one of his major political backers. The caller actually was a Buffalo blogger, and the whole episode made Walker look silly.
(During the call, Walker told "Koch" that the Madison crisis "is our moment.........our time to change history," which sounds like he had something on his mind beyond the deficit.)
Second, we are now well into a new economy, a global knowledge economy. In that economy, the big rewards will go to the well-educated -- both to well-educated people and to well-educated states. So this is a particularly bad time to declare war on teachers.
Walker and Kasich would deny that they're "declaring war" on teachers, but this certainly isn't the way the teachers set it. They, like Krugman, see a "power grab," in which the governor grabs power from state workers. Not surprisingly, they're scared and angry and fighting back. If the governors ever had any hope of negotiating with their employees, they've blown it. Whatever the merits, this is bad politics.
A close reading of Walker's deficit-reduction bills enforces the suspicion that he is more intent on privatization than on the deficit. One clause would let him sell any state-owned power plant, without bidding. Koch and his brother are in the power business. Walker denies he plans any favors for his bank rollers, but critics are not convinced.
Third, balancing budgets totally through spending cuts might work in the short run, but it will turn Wisconsin and similar states into the nation's bargain basements. Walker already has given back federal funds for high-speed rail because the project might cost Wisconsin money. If his determination to trim the deficit leads to other infrastructure cuts, Wisconsin will be paying for his frugality for years to come.
For states to compete in a global economy, they need the attributes -- good schools, well-educated workers, a smoothly-functioning government, political stability, and 21st-century communications like widespread broadband and high-speed rail -- that attract high-level investment. Without these attributes, all they'll attract are the low-skill, low-paying firms that guarantee that Wisconsin will continue to lag the nation in jobs and wages.
No one in Wisconsin or most other Midwestern states has suggested -- yet -- that deficits be closed through a combination of spending cuts and higher taxes. Until recently, tax increases have been a political third rail, but Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn rammed through one without noticeable political backlash. Granted, Quinn and Illinois face one of the nation's biggest deficits. But the current crisis just may have the unintended result of putting tax increases back on the political agenda, even in states like Wisconsin and Ohio.
Fourth, another unintended result is to create sympathy for public service unions, including teachers' unions. Until now, nobody loved the teachers' unions. Even pro-union politicians and economic planners agreed that teachers' unions -- especially their restrictive rules on the length of schools years and school days -- are a major barrier to economic development and recovery in the Midwest. Virtually everyone admires teachers and hates their union.
Suddenly, people who have to choose between teachers' union and governors like Walker see new merit in unions. Yes, they know that public service employees already earn more on the average than private sector employees. But they realize that most public employees, especially teachers, are well-educated, so get higher pay. More important, they also realize that private-sector wages have been stagnant or falling for years, partially because their unions were destroyed in the deindustrialization of the Midwest. Public employees who trust unions to prevent the same collapse in public wages just may have a point.
This doesn't guarantee that public unions, especially teachers' unions, are going to remain popular forever. Right now may be the best time these unions ever have for initiating real reform themselves -- not in wages and perks, which any teachers richly deserves, but in work rules that result in American children spending less time being taught than children almost anywhere else in the world. If the teachers volunteered these reforms in exchange for continued union protection, my bet is that almost every Midwesterner to the left of Scott Walker would stand up and cheer.
What's happening in Madison, Columbus and Indianapolis may be the wake up call that moderate Midwesterners need to think hard about the region's priorities. Many people treated the Tea Party as a joke, assuming that, even if they won office, they would soon be mugged by reality. That still may happen, but in the meantime the new arrivals -- both in Washington and in statehouses -- seem intent on ramming through a radical agenda, possibly assuming that this is the best chance they'll ever have.
They may be right. Governors like Walker and Kasich and legislative leaders like the Indiana Republicans may think they have a mandate. More likely, they are creating a backlash among Midwesteners who want something more than an ideological answer to the region's problems.
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