GOP Legies Want Wisconsin to Have California’s Budget Crisis

Another headshaker from the Assembly Republican braintrust — this time bringing the same budget shackles to Wisconsin which helped drive California into its near economic collapse and nearly killed a bipartisan solution to their woes.

Leah Vukmir and Rich Zipperer, who apparently have created their own Assembly Bad Ideas Caucus, are now pushing for a required two-thirds “supermajority” for any bill that raises some kind of tax.

If this wasn’t such a monumentally bad idea, it would be laughable. After all, this is the Assembly GOP cadre which was a part of 14 years of iron-fisted rule, where Republicans rammed through whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted.Before we move on, the good news: Vukmir and Zipperer, because they chose narrow partisan ideological points to impress Charlie Sykes, are utterly irrelevant to the current public policy debate. Utterly. Irrelevant.

So breathe.

Moving on, it is exactly this “supermajority” which nearly resulted in the collapse of California. Facing a $41 billion deficit because the failed Bush administration policies of handing our treasury over to the richest Americans and corporations who support people like Vukmir and Zipperer, California was held hostage by a handful of Republican state legislators hell-bent on rejecting the budget hammered out by GOP Gov. Ah-nold and the Democratic-run legislature.

With California’s unemployment rate well above the nation rate, hovering at just under 9 percent, elected officials were faced with a grave choice, increase revenues or slash service and eviscerate public worker rolls, to the detriment of all public services.

A slim majority of Republicans dug in, stuck their fingers in their ears, and said “no new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes” — basically putting their failed ideology before the needs of the people.

Schools collapse. So what.

Health care fails. So what.

Police taken off the streets. So what.

Firehouses without firefighters. So what.

And it goes on and on.

Now the Assembly Bad Ideas Caucus wants to bring that California disaster to Wisconsin.

Thankfully, Vukmir and Zipperer’s “Manifest Density” plan was quickly ditched by Democrats in charge of the Assembly.

Thankfully.