Moral Double-Standard: Quick Wisconsin Business Tax Breaks, Aid Delays For Jobless

The GOP-dominated Wisconsin Legislature and Gov. Walker can move at warp speed or a snail's pace - - which gear they choose tells us a lot about their values.

The Legislature approved a business tax cut in January for Walker so soon after his swearing-in on the 3rd that it got to his desk before his State of the State Speech on Feb. 1.

By government standards, or for that matter, in any large organization with multiple divisions, that's a lot of managed and monitored fast-tracked scheduling, drafting and meeting.

Now consider the slothful pace the same parties followed to eventually, grudgingly simply pass a law accessing available federal funds - - no state dollars or appropriation involved - - to extend weekly unemployment insurance payments to 10,000 out-of-work Wisconsinites whose federally-paid benefits ran out April 16.

Three months will have elapsed, assuming that Walker signs the measure this week.

Wisconsin's maximum benefit paid to the unemployed is $363 a week. Without these modest checks, jobless citizens in a very tough economy no doubt went without doctor visits, groceries, and gasoline, which is why I rate the Legislature and Walker's disinterest a moral failure, and not just a political snub to some people who might have been Democratic voters.

I find the willful inertia of the Legislature particularly disgraceful since a legislator is entitled to an $88-per-day tax-free payment from Wisconsin taxpayers, as a perk, if the elected representative spends a second of time in the Capitol, even when not in session.

If legislators drive into Madison just four days a week, they get pocket money, on top of their salaries, of $352 - -with no tax deducted or due - - which is a sum almost exactly equal to what they denied, for weeks and months, to those out of, but looking for work, who would have qualified for the maximum weekly unemployment insurance payment.

And compared to a recipient, say, getting $200 a week, quite a taxpayer-provided haul.

As I had written earlier, (and about which there were plenty of comments), a friend had said to me that having sat on that funding was the worst thing Walker had done.

I pretty much agree.