Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Hey, WI GOP pocket-picking legislators: $top the $teal(s)

Wisconsin's power-addicted and phony-conservative GOP legislators - 

- continue to commandeer huge amounts of taxpayers' money - this time a fresh million dollars or more - to extend their anti-democratic gerrymandering stranglehold on the Legislature, its budgeting powers and other donor-serving opportunities. 

And this self-interested expropriation of tax dollars is just the latest state GOP 'investment' of your money in its anti-democratic decade-of-domination, so, yes, let's $top these $teals, detailed here:

* From 2020:

Taxpayers have spent nearly $2 million this year on lawyers hired by Republican legislators to fight election lawsuits, including ones aimed at making voting easier during the coronavirus pandemic.

In addition, taxpayers have spent more than $400,000 on attorneys hired by Republicans to fight parts of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ COVID-19 response plan....  

In all, Republican lawmakers have spent more than $5 million over the last two years on private attorneys at taxpayer expense. The largest part of that amount — $2.1 million — went toward defending lame-duck laws that limited Evers’ powers....

*In 2019:

A panel of federal judges ruled that Democrats do not have to pay attorneys' fees and costs incurred by the GOP in a Wisconsin gerrymandering lawsuit....The Republican defense of the maps has cost taxpayers more than $3.7 million since 2011. That was the year Republicans took control of both the Senate and Assembly and reconfigured political boundaries in Wisconsin

* And earlier in 2019: 

Not content with just adding in-house staffers and sweet insider raises at taxpayer expense...Vos hands out whopping raise, adds staff... Wisconsin Republican legislators led by GOP Assembly Speaker Robin "Blank-Check" Vos are taking small government hypocrisy to a higher, cash-crazed level:

Another round of secret expropriations of taxpayer dollars to hire private lawyers of their choosing to defend the power-grabbing lame-duck laws they hustled through in the dead of night.
Top lawmakers were asked Wednesday to sign off on hiring lawyers without knowing what it would cost. If approved, two GOP leaders — Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester and Senate President Roger Roth of Appleton — would be given the power to determine whom to hire and how much to pay them.  

* From 2017

Don't forget that Republican legislators spent $400,000 of taxpayer dollars on private lawyers who put together the plan behind closed doors to keep Republicans in power that has enabled years of horrible governance.



1 comment:

Jake formerly of the LP said...

"Frugal, small government conservatives", you know.

Keep this in mind when WisGOPs claim they can't expand Medicaid (and therefore will spend hundreds of millions of additional state tax dollars_ because they would be giving "welfare" to the working poor. When it comes to their needs, they'll gladly take as much of our tax dollars as it takes.