I remember how pissed we were. Governor Tommy Thompson had taken the line-item veto and put in on garish display.
No longer did Thompson have to veto an entire budget, for instance, throwing out things he liked in favor of preventing things he didn't like. He even had power to cross out letters and punctuations--the so-called "Vanna White" veto, after the co-host of "Wheel of Fortune," who flipped letters to reveal clues on the game board. It gave him immense power.
More to the point, it took the impetus to make legislation entirely from the state assembly and senate's hands, where it's supposed to belong. It constituted micro-managing legislation to a sometimes absurd extent.
The law allowing such vetoes gives the governor permission to, as a Marquette Law Review article said in Spring 1993, the ability to "delete individual words, eliminate digits, and reduce the amounts of appropriations in a budget bill."
We in the teachers' union saw it as a direct challenge to the power we used to have. Education is the driving force in any state's budget, and the insertion of the ability to take out one little piece after another takes away the ability of any interest group, not just a union, to influence what happens.
Very few Wisconsin governors had made vigorous use of this enormous power, which has in fact existed since 1930. Thompson availed himself with a scimitar. He frustrated a legislature controlled by compromise with 408 line-item vetoes in 1987, 281 in 1989, and a whopping 457 in 1991. Without override ability, the legislature was strapped with a now one-sided, power-laden governor. It almost didn't matter what or how legislative deliberations came to whatever budget proposals were made; without the two-thirds majority required to override gubernatorial vetoes, it was the governor who could dictate what needed to be in the budget.
By 1991, Thompson had been governor for one full four-year term and had been re-elected in 1990 by a 16-point landslide. He was on the way to being governor for 14 years, having it interrupted only by taking the Secretary of Transportation position offered to him by incoming President George W. Bush. Thompson had been given a mandate, and now he was taking it by storm.
Thompson took license with something that had faded mostly into memory, much like the presidential "pocket veto," which allows the president to put a proposed bill in his desk drawer, so to speak, with ten days or less remaining in a Congressional session, under the guise of not having sufficient time to consider it (which, considering all the news coverage of his office and Congress, is absurd and has made it largely obsolete). In many budget deliberations, various governors utilized the line-item veto very little or not at all (source: Marquette Law Review, Spring 1993).
Of course, Republicans in the legislature complained about Thompson's massive use not one bit. They were beside themselves. They could put up firewalls against WEAC, which always wanted more money for education and educators, without taking specific responsibility for standing in the way.
So now, when current Governor Tony Evers has taken delicate liberties with education funding in the present budget proposal, crossing out numbers (as he had the power to do, see above) to allow education funding increases until 2425, a whopping 402 years, Republicans are filled with complaints about improprieties and guardrails being sundered.
My reaction? First, Republicans seized a stranglehold on power by manipulating the division of electoral districts so as to foment extreme gerrymandering on the state, both on the state assembly and senate and the U.S. Congress. Two Congressional races in 2022 had no Democratic opposition at all. The plan was, obviously, to bully the state into accepting Republican thinking in perpetuity, even longer than 402 years. Checks and balances ambushed them in a way which they profited from 30 years ago, but doesn't quite fit into their overall plan of domination.
In other words, tough beans. You celebrated before. Now reap the whirlwind.
Secondly, laws are too often passed with a narrow perspective. Someone has an ox to be gored, and every nail needs a hammer. Nobody can see past their noses into a future in which legislative lockdowns against the other side's abuse can be turned against the perpetrating party. But it isn't true that what can't be foreseen never happens. It almost always does.
To wit: What goes around comes around. Republicans, read Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who is of course filled with ersatz outrage, swear that they will get their version of the budget passed anyhow. This is hurtling full steam toward the state Supreme Court, the face of which is going to have a sea change in 21 days when newly elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz takes office and the ultra-conservative core is going to get trampled into irrelevance, at least for the next few years. Listening to Republicans whine while engaging in their second favorite activity, playing the victim (their first being bullies), is delicious to observe.
This works both ways, though. The present U.S Supreme Court has been seized by reactionary thinking, reflected in its opinions on abortion and affirmative action, to mention just two. The cries for Court reform have gone up in some sectors of the Democratic cadre. Congress has the power to determine the number of justices on the Court; why can't the Court be expanded to create a new, reversely biased majority?
It could, except for two items: First, it would have to take a majority of both houses of Congress to provide that relief, and there are several Democrats who are wisely pausing at that door. So the votes just aren't there. President Biden is against it, too. Such a bill, even if it were to be miraculously passed, would be vetoed.
Second, expansion of Supreme Court numbers--to regain a majority would take four more, to make the count thirteen--could continue ad infinitum with the ascendance of power by the other side. Putting four more new Democratic-leaning members on the Court now, for instance, could mean expanding the Court by two members each time their decisions became too uncomfortable. The Court could end up with membership in the twenties, unmanageable and unwieldy. Even beyond that.
The Supreme Court has relevance issues now. What would it become then?
What went around would come around. I don't like the composition of the Court now, but that has as much to do with timing as with anything else. But adjustments are being made by its Dobbs decision. Much like Southern states began maneuvering around Brown v. Board almost from the moment it was announced, pro-choice states are passing new laws that favor women's rights to determine what they can do with their bodies. Federalism has its role, regardless of what anyone thinks about any Court rulings about anything. Let's let the Democrats take advantage of a "states rights" position and see where it goes.
For mild-mannered, soft-spoken Tony Evers to work something this radical into Wisconsin's state budget process means an explosion of frustration with what has become a dysfunctional state political system. As a life-long educator, he can see the surreptitious plans of a misguided Republican power structure to take public education and destroy it, based on exaggerated claims of immorality and incompetence. That is what should be addressed, not more tinkering with an engine that already isn't working.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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