Lawmakers Do the Right Thing in Wisconsin, Massachusetts

by Mike Hall, May 8, 2006

There’s lots of good stuff going on at the state level where, unlike the Republican-controlled Congress, lawmakers actually can be persuaded to do the right thing and support working families.

Led by the AFL-CIO union movement, Wisconsin union activists helped move Democratic and Republican lawmakers to oppose TABOR, with lawmakers putting a fork in it and calling it done May 4. The so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights proposal aimed to put an amendment in the state’s constitution to bind the state’s hands in spending and revenue.

By a 20–12 vote, the Senate killed the tax plan that was patterned after Colorado’s failed TABOR measure. Last fall, Colorado voters gave the 1992 law the boot after it resulted in huge cuts in spending for education, health care, emergency services, law enforcement and other services.

In Wisconsin, a coalition of unions, community groups, municipal and county officials and others mobilized to put the brakes on the scheme. But in more than a dozen states, including Oregon, Arizona, Ohio, Arizona and Maine, extremists such as Grover Norquist are funneling money and support to put TABOR-like initiatives on the November ballot or pass legislation.

Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Senate followed the House’s lead and overrode Republican Gov. Mitt Romney’s veto of the provisions of the state’s new health care law that requires employers who do not offer health insurance to their workers to pay a $295 annual assessment.

But the small annual assessment does little to balance the health care cost burden between workers and employers. The bill is the most far-reaching measure to shift the burden of health care costs to workers. Under the legislation, individuals who don’t qualify for the state Medicaid program or for insurance through their jobs would be forced to buy low-cost private plans. Romney’s move to exempt employers that don’t cover their workers was insult added to injury.

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