Thursday, January 28, 2021

Having botched emergency mask ban, WI GOP triggers emergency circular firing squad

Wisconsin Republicans are having themselves a messy Thursday. 

After the State Senate had moved precipitously to overturn Gov. Evers' COVID19 mask prevention order without knowing the dumb move would cost the state and unemployed workers nearly $50 million a month in related emergency food aid, Assembly Speaker Vos had to also precipitously yank the measure and blast his GOP Senate 'colleagues' for sloppy work:

"Our job is to guarantee when we pass legislation we know what the ramifications are," he told reporters. "Unfortunately our Senate colleagues passed it, they didn’t necessarily do the same due diligence."

No doubt this about-face on Vos's big day of partisan achievement was disappointing, but the good news for the Assembly Speaker was there were even dumber scapegoats to blame.

Who and where, and how dumb might they be? 

Why, look no farther than Vos's 'colleagues' in the GOP-run State Senate with whom the Assembly shares a State Capitol.

And that GOP-led Senate today tried to paper over its blunder by quickly a passing a make-up replacement measure - a sort of 'ban lite' - that would tolerate some Evers' issuance of a limited measure so the Federal government could pretty-please send the food aid funding anyway.

Mind you, the food aid funding is available to seriopus-minded states which employ emergency COVID19 prevention measures like the one the GOP-led Senate had just blocked and was now trying to pretend they really hadn't. 

Sort of, but questions arise:

* Will grudgingly allowing Evers to pass a half-baked  emergency order pass a federal smell test?

* 'Does COVID19 abide by insincere partisan half-measures,' asked more than 6,300 dead Wisconsinites?

* Would a parallel and limited reduction in food aid funding mean there would be only new limited hunger here?

I guess we'll see.

But asking for the money after blocking Evers' masking order reminds me of the ridiculous and failed move then-Gov. Walker made in 2011 when he asked the Federal government pretty-please to send Wisconsin $150 million in Amtrak upgrade financing after he followed through on his long, loud and politically-inspired, slam-Obama campaign pledge and permanently blocked the larger and fully-funded Amtrak construction upgrade between Madison and Chicago.

Feds turn Walker down on passenger rail funding request

So we ask again today, as we did when Walker wrecked rail transit in Wisconsin for his own partisan advancement - and then asked for a bailout:

In what world of cavalier denial do these so-called Republican 'leaders' live and work in?

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on the lookout for his guy at the airport last year. Today he just spotted a State Senate full of scapegoats who can help him - for now - avoid making a $50-million-a-month blunder. 

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