Budget Committee Takes Up ‘Extraordinary’ Bills Amid Protests, Dem Grandstanding

By Matt Kittle -
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[bctt tweet=”It was a day marked by fiery speeches, unbelievable irony, and a bit of deja vu, as hundreds of opponents of the bills packed the hearing room and crowded the halls outside. #wiright #wipolitics ” username=”MacIverWisc”]

MacIver News Service | Dec. 4, 2018

By M.D. Kittle 

MADISON – After a full day of angry testimony and grandstanding Democratic lawmakers, the Republican majority on the Legislature’s powerful budget-writing committee early Tuesday morning passed dozens of bills aimed at protecting GOP limited-government reforms over the past eight years and limiting the powers of the incoming liberal governor and attorney general. 

Just after 10 p.m., the four Democrats on the 16-member Joint Finance Committee moved to delay a vote on the measures that they bill as a Republican “power grab.” The motion was roundly rejected by all 12 Republicans. It wasn’t until after midnight that the separate bills passed on a party-line vote.

The Assembly and Senate are scheduled to take up the measures later today. 

It was a day marked by fiery speeches, unbelievable irony, and a bit of deja vu, as hundreds of opponents of the bills packed the hearing room and crowded the halls outside. Many received a “Call to Action” message from left-wing groups looking to recreate the headline-grabbing mass demonstration days of Gov. Scott Walker’s first few months in office.

Republicans are proposing a suite of last-minute legislation, from a bill aimed at protecting people with pre-existing conditions to moving the date of the 2020 presidential primary and narrowing Wisconsin’s open-ended early-voting laws. Proposed measures would also require more accountability in the executive branch.

Rep. Katrina Shankland (D-Stevens Point), a member of the committee, called the omnibus packages a “pernicious power grab” that would “cost taxpayers up the wazoo.” Interesting that Democrats, who have campaigned on and endorsed billions of dollars in additional funding for a slew of big-government initiatives are suddenly concerned about taxpayers. 

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) says Republicans are concerned that Gov.-elect Tony Evers and incoming Attorney General Josh Kaul will do what they promised to do on the campaign trail: try to dismantle the sweeping taxpayer-centered reforms led by Walker and the Republican-controlled Legislature over the past eight years. 

“The idea that there’s going to a complete shift in Wisconsin, I don’t have any problem highlighting that right now. I want the people to understand that there is going to be a divide between the legislative and executive branch,” Fitzgerald said.

“I think Gov.-elect Evers is going to bring a liberal agenda to Wisconsin,” Fitzgerald said at a press conference moments before the marathon Joint Finance Committee meeting. “The idea that there’s going to a complete shift in Wisconsin, I don’t have any problem highlighting that right now. I want the people to understand that there is going to be a divide between the legislative and executive branch.” 

Among the more controversial measures is a bill that would move the 2020 presidential primary from the first Tuesday in April to the second Tuesday in March. Changing the date would decouple the partisan presidential election from the nonpartisan spring election. The shift would clearly benefit Republicans’ efforts to retain conservative state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly, a Walker appointee, by moving a significant voter draw from the April ballot.

Democrats also went ballistic about a Republican provision that would limit early voting, warning Republicans that a federal court has tossed out a similar limitation.

Several measures would provide more legislative oversight of executive branch agencies and the attorney general. It boils down to a matter of trust, and Republicans clearly don’t trust Kaul and Evers to keep liberal activism out of the executive branch. Kaul has pledged to remove Wisconsin from a list of state plaintiff’s in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare. 

The Republican majority will take another swipe at a bill that would prohibit courts from simply taking the word of government agencies on law. The end of agency “deference” also would restrict the use of so-called guidance documents used by bureacrats to set policies. Critics of the practice say agencies use the documents to bypass legislative oversight and review.

Republicans also want to make sure that welfare reforms, including stricter work requirements and drug testing initiatives, aren’t wiped out by a Democrat who has declared how much he loathes the reforms.

Democrats are crying foul over legislation that would expand some key state boards and commissions. They are particularly miffed over a bill that would change the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. board from 12 to 18 members. Ten of the members would be appointed by the speaker and the Senate majority leader. And the bill would give the board power over appointing WEDC’s executive director, taking away the authority from the governor.

To budget committee member, Rep. Chris Taylor (D-Madison), such legislation is the “face of despotism.” And “unprecedented”. Taylor, who was scolded by Nygren for “playing to” the liberal crowd in the hearing room, asked the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau when was the last time the Legislature called an extraordinary session to limit the powers of the executive branch.

In 2010, when Democrats controlled the Legislature and the executive branch, a fiscal bureau representative answered.

Taylor asked the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau when was the last time the Legislature called an extraordinary session to limit the powers of the executive branch. In 2010, when Democrats controlled the Legislature and the executive branch, they answered.

Democrats, fresh from a bad beating at the polls in November 2010, hastily called an extraordinary session mainly to push through union contracts that would protect their Big Labor friends from Gov.-elect Scott Walker’s budget ax. The move failed when former Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker (D-Weston) said he wouldn’t support the deals. This, after Democrat Rep. Jeff Wood was granted release from his 60-day jail sentence long enough to provide his party-line vote.

Well, Taylor bloviated, that session wasn’t about taking away power from Gov.-elect Scott Walker. It most certainly was, countered  Nygren. The hastily assembled labor deals would have tied Walker’s hands in dealing with a massive, $3.6 billion shortfall he inherited from Democrats. And liberal lawmakers at the time tried to push other provisions in the lame duck session that would have limited the executive branch’s authority. 

What the minority party seems to have forgotten is that the legislative branch — the “first branch” — holds the authority to make the state’s laws and the power of the purse. While political motives are clearly in play, the Republican-led majority does have the clear constitutional authority to call such a session and to pass laws that demand more accountability of the executive branch. And until early next month, the state’s executive branch will be led by a Republican who holds the constitutional authority to sign or veto any bill he pleases.

“The constitution gives broad powers to this body to oversee government,” Nygren said. “What powers in the constitution are listed for the attorney general? None… Let’s not exaggerate what we are doing here today.” 

As Nygren opened the meeting, protesters disrupted the proceedings chanting, “Stop the coup!” and “Shame! Shame! Shame!” When Capitol police shut the hearing room doors to keep the din of the demonstrators from further disrupting the session, protesters stomped on the floor, the pounding reverberating through the hardwood doors. They screamed, “Republicans hate democracy,” and “We’ve seen this before.” 

Indeed, we all have. The disorder outside and — at times — inside the chamber was reminiscent of Big Labor-led protests against Walker’s landmark Act 10 legislation early in his first term. While the Republicans’ reforms to the state’s public sector collective bargaining law drew tens of thousands more demonstrators to the Capitol, Monday’s “resistance” movement maintained the same hostility and myopic sense of righteous indignation that marked the Act 10 protests.

Following a string of outbursts, Nygren threatened to clear the chamber. Police removed several members of the public after multiple warnings. 

The long day was marked by the usual over-the-top rhetoric, perhaps none more over than Shankland insisting that the Republican-led extraordinary session is the “opposite of the peaceful transfer of power.” 

Opponents of the bills repeated a common complaint — that Republicans were somehow subverting the will of the people after losing “every statewide election” last month. Evers, in written testimony submitted to the committee, declared the bills and “the spirit of this extraordinary session are unfettered attempts to override and ignore what the people of Wisconsin asked for this November.”

The irony of the left’s campaign to recall Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, and six Republican senators shortly after they swept into power in 2010 could not have been lost on conservatives who saw the recall movement as trampling on the will of the people. Or in the “resistance” movement that has spent the last two years trying to limit or eliminate the power of an executive branch led by President Donald Trump. 

Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton), a minority member of the committee, warned his Republican colleagues that the bills of this hastily called extraordinary session would diminish their legacy.

“Republicans got a lot of stuff done, a lot of stuff I didn’t agree with, but this is what you’re going to be known for,” he said.

GOP leadership countered that expanding and protecting their limited-government reforms is ultimately what the lame duck session is about.