April 14, 2008

Where Have You Gone, Bob LaFollette?

By George Lightbourn

It had been a few years since I had heard about Raymond Scheppach, the Executive Director of the National Governors Association.  Then last week he wrote an important article published recently by Stateline.org.  In the article he set the bar high for governors across the country facing recession-induced budget shortfalls.  The non-partisan Scheppach wrote that governors should use this exercise in belt tightening to implement efficiency and restructuring to make government better.

Scheppach laid out several ideas including:

·        Eliminating marginal programs

·        Consolidating duplicative programs

·        Streamlining business regulations

·        Consolidating and streamlining fee and revenue systems

·        Focusing on health care cost controls and establishing quality measures

That’s a good list, apparently too good for Wisconsin.  In Wisconsin we have a governor intent on simply muddling through this the recession.  True, the two houses of the Legislature have forwarded equally short-sighted, uninspired plans to bridge the fiscal gap, but it is the governor we look to for leadership when times are less than rosy.

What has our governor suggested in his budget repair plan?  First, he has revived his idea to game the federal government by imposing a tax on hospitals, thus generating more federal funds.  Second, for the third time he has suggested raiding the transportation fund.  Third, he would increase borrowing.  Fourth, he would spend securitized tobacco settlement funds.  No program elimination, streamlining or consolidation made it onto the list.

The fact that Governor Doyle ignored Scheppach’s advice to use the tough economic circumstances as an opportunity to inject more value into government comes as no surprise to conservatives.  They have never have had high expectations of government and know that only through active management will government deliver value to the citizens.  Active management in state government has been missing in action for quite some time.

By contrast, those who proudly lay claim to being liberal implicitly know the goodness of government.  They believe that government holds the answers to what ails education, the environment, health care and just about any other complaint shared by two or more people.  But these people - and I have to include Governor Doyle among them - seem unwilling to do the heavy lifting that government requires.  These people who make a habit of dropping Bob LaFollette’s name, have become a pale imitation of the generations of liberals who preceded them.

Take for example U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.  It was Brandeis who conceived the concept of states as being laboratories of democracy.  From his roots as a Progressive, Brandeis saw states as innovators and risk takers.  An idea that worked in one place could be exported to other states.  There is no way that Justice Brandeis would advocate government leaders simply muddling through from one election to the next.

And how about that paragon of Wisconsin liberalism, Robert LaFollette?  Fighting Bob had no concept of muddling through.  During his time as Wisconsin’s Governor, and later as a U.S. Congressman, LaFollette championed many of the ideas that have been ingrained in the landscape of Wisconsin government: a civil service system, social security, progressive income tax and the regulation of banking and other industries.  Perhaps his proudest contribution to government innovation was the Wisconsin Idea; that homegrown notion of using the brainpower of the university to better the lives of all Wisconsinites. 

I doubt that Brandeis or LaFollette would recognize the government that their legacy has yielded in Wisconsin.  Heavy lifting and bold ideas have given way to borrowing just enough money to get by while keeping one eye keenly trained on the next election cycle.  We should hardly be surprised that our governor has given short shrift to the notion of using the economic hard times to actually strengthen our government.  We should hardly be surprised that tax gimmicks and borrowing are his cornerstone to solving the fiscal problem.  We should hardly be surprised, and we are not.  We merely accept a government that simply muddles through.

No, the model of government which constantly strives for improvement is a faint memory.  The government that Raymond Scheppach wrote about might exist somewhere, but not here in Wisconsin.  And the government that Brandeis and LaFollette championed has slipped quietly into the history books.