Jon Chait imagines a Democratic governor proposing a deficit reduction plan in a Bizarro-world version of Wisconsin:
Imagine a Democratic governor proposed a plan to close a budget crisis. First he jacked up the Earned Income Tax Credit. Then he proposed a tax hike on the rich and on corporations to close the deficit. And then he packaged it with a stringent campaign finance law, a law to require corporations to obtain permission from shareholders before engaging in any kind of political activism, and other laws designed to crush the political power of corporate America. (Pro-Democratic businesses would be exempted.) It’s budget-related, because, after all, you can’t maintain higher taxes on the rich if the rich are able to bend the political system to protect
their interests. Oh, and Republicans accepted the tax hikes on the rich but opposed the other provisions, but Democrats refused to negotiate them.
I suspect conservatives would interpret this not as a genuine effort to close the deficit but as an exercise in class warfare and raw politics. They’d be correct.
It’s all about power, baby, power. Scott Walker knows exactly what he’s doing. For more on what the rich have to gain or lose in this battle, take a look at the great set of charts from Dave Gilson and Carolyn Perot that accompany my union piece today. It’s called “Eight charts that explain everything that’s wrong with America,” which might be stretching things a bit. I can think of a few other things wrong with America too. But they’re a pretty good start.
