WTPA Opponents' Straw Man

Xoff's post today is an amusing preview of the doom and gloom politics you'll soon see from the likes of Judy Robson (who is so on top of her game she failed to appoint two members of the caucus she "leads" to show up at the first committee meeting on TPA).

The story goes like this: If you support limiting future growth in taxes and spending you're a cold hearted Grinch and as such should have to be able to explain what you would do right now to undo the last twenty years of imprudent fiscal decisions in state and local government in Badgerland.

While Owen had a blast and jumped at the chance to tell him off, I won't attempt to pick apart the straw man.

The TPA does not require any draconian cuts like what Xoff describes. No one is proposing we set limits on state government retroactive to 1986.

If we had put TPA limits in place in '86, state and local governments would be spending considerably less money than they are right now. Probably not $5 billion less as projected by the Doyle donor, Reschovsky, though. The defective crystal ball in his ivory tower divines that local taxpayers would never approve a referendum (revenue limits on schools have proved that's not the case). Yet it is clear government would be spending billions less than we are now. But as Xoff puts it in his own post, "Let's deal with the reality, not the abstract."

The reason we want TPA is so the government will grow more slowly. If we had put incremental limits in place in 1986 the government would have grown more slowly, and we wouldn't be spending more than we can afford like we are today.

Now, Xoff, Seth, Jay et. al, that doesn't mean we're going to make billions of dollars in cuts as soon as TPA goes into effect. It simply means that as we go forward government will be constrained. No doubt some areas will be allowed to grow faster than others and the structure of government will change.

For the better.

And it's about damn time.