The fallout officially has begun in Wisconsin’s public-employee union impasse, as teachers in several Wisconsin school districts received layoff notices Monday, while President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies started feeling the heat of public opinion turning against them.
Obama interjected himself in the controversy
again Monday, after carefully avoiding the Wisconsin controversy since his Feb. 17 statement that GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s proposals represent “an assault on unions.”
“I think the White House sensed that it would be no end of trouble if they started meddling in state budget disputes,” University of Virginia Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato told Newsmax.
Yet at a Monday meeting of U.S. governors at the White House, Obama seemed to lecture the governors that public employees should not be “denigrated or vilified.”
Obama added that “everyone should be at the table” when budget decisions are made in a spirit of “shared sacrifice” — the same terms union leaders have used to defend collective bargaining in the face of massive state deficits.
Rising GOP star and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie could be seen shaking his head as the president suggested that Republican governors were vilifying public employees. He later told reporters that Obama was “playing politics to his political base.”
“He’s already getting ready for re-election,” Christie told NorthJersey.com.
“No one’s demonizing or vilifying public employees,” Christie added. “What we’re doing is, for once, telling the truth about how much they cost. And the only reason for that is because their unions make outlandish demands and have won in the past.”
Walker also fired back at Obama Monday afternoon with a statement pointing out that most federal employees are not allowed collective bargaining for wages and benefits, “while our plan allows it for base pay.”
“And I'm sure the president knows that the average federal worker pays twice as much for health insurance as what we are asking for in Wisconsin,” Walker stated. “At least I would hope he knows these facts.”
Rather than vilify public employees, Walker said he had “repeatedly praised the more than 300,000 government workers who come to work every day in Wisconsin” despite the labor action going on in his state.
And in a thinly veiled remark that was perhaps his sharpest rebuke yet to Obama, Walker said: “I’m sure that President Obama simply misunderstands the issues in Wisconsin, and isn’t acting like the union bosses in saying one thing and doing another.”
Walker says that, without the budget bill, state agencies will have to begin preparations this week to send out layoff notices to 1,500 state workers.
“If we do not get these changes and the Senate Democrats don’t come back, we’re going to be forced to make up the savings in layoffs, and that to me is just unacceptable,” Walker said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.
A spokesman for Walker warned Monday that Democratic state legislators must return to the state by Tuesday to vote on the governor’s budget bill, or Wisconsin will miss out on a chance to delay $165 million payment on state debt.
Missing the opportunity to delay the payment would “lead to more painful and aggressive spending cuts in the very near future,” Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The layoff notices that school districts mailed out do not necessarily mean that the layoffs will occur. However, under the collective-bargaining agreement struck with the teachers’ unions, the school districts must notify teachers several months in advance if their contracts might not be renewed.
Walker’s budget-repair bill, which he hoped would help avert mass layoffs, remains stalled in the state Senate. Wisconsin Democrats object to Walker’s proposals on the grounds that they amount to “union busting,” although they do permit a significantly limited form of collective bargaining to continue.
On Tuesday, Walker will deliver a budget address outlining his plans to address the state’s $3.4 billion shortfall, which has transformed Wisconsin into ground zero for the growing national battle over fiscal austerity on both the national and the state levels. Walker had hoped to have a budget bill before outlining his fiscal proposals.
There are growing indications in recent polls that Democrats may be losing the messaging war over GOP fiscal-austerity proposals on the state and federal levels. Among them:
- A Public Opinion Research poll for The Hill.com shows that likely voters would blame Democrats rather than Republicans, by a 29 to 23 percent margin, if the government had to suspend some operations due to an impasse at the federal level.
- Even more noteworthy, The Hill survey showed that, by a 34 to 19 percent margin, independents say they would blame Democrats over Republicans if Congress can’t agree on spending cuts and the government shuts down.
- On the national level, by a 58 to 33 percent margin, voters tell Rasmussen they prefer a partial shutdown of the federal government, if that’s what it takes to get achieve reductions in spending.
- A recent Rasmussen Reports poll showed that likely 2012 voters favor Walker’s stance over the unions’, 48 to 38 percent.
- A Rasmussen survey shows that 67 percent of voters believe Wisconsin Democrats were wrong to jam up Wisconsin’s legislative system by fleeing the state rather than taking a vote on Walker’s budget proposals.
But political guru Sabato warns it’s too soon to project which side will ultimately come out ahead politically if the state and federal impasse continues.
“We’re headed for one of those special moments in American politics and government which will define the near-term future. And no one knows how it will play out,” Sabato tells Newsmax.
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