Photo by: Clarion

Pro Argument

By AJ Gunning

Entertainment editor

Wisconsin has become the epicenter of the state budget crisis, and it appears this unrest will spread with nearly every state in the U.S. dealing with similar budget shortfalls.

However, Scott Walker, the Republican Governor of Wisconsin, has badly mishandled the situation and made it into much larger and more politically divisive issues than just the intended closing the budget deficit.  Instead, Governor Walker has decided he would also like to destroy public unions in the process of stripping away their collective bargaining rights.

According to Governor Walker, stripping away the rights of public unions will solve the cause of the budget deficit, even if it means leaving certain government employees particularly exposed, such as teachers who take enough abuse from parents and pundits.

There seems to be an unfair perspective of these government workers that they are unwilling to take a pay cut or lower their benefits.

However, this is not the case as union leaders have accepted all of the governor’s budget demands, but the protest has continued to try and protect their collective bargaining rights, which will allow for them at a future date, when the economy improves and there is budget room to maneuver to discuss higher salaries and benefits for themselves.  

Given how little the average government worker is paid this seems to be a completely rational request.

The right to assemble is protected in the First Amendment, and assembling a union falls into that protected right. Workers in every profession should have a right to organize themselves into unions so as to better protect themselves and earn more benefits.  Though there is certainly a difference between private and public unions, the principle is the same, people assembling to look out for their interest.

Certainly, there is room to improve public unions, but Scott Walker’s hard-nosed, Texas-Ranger approach is not the way to go about it.  The government should be making an ally out of public unions, not gutting them from the inside-out.  

 

Con Argument

By Dylan Proietti

Opinions editor

For the past two weeks, a multitude of people, including various government workers, labor activists and students, have been camping inside the Wisconsin State Capitol.

These people have gathered to protest a proposed legislation from Republican Governor Scott Walker. The legislation, which passed the Wisconsin assembly on Feb. 25, is a budget repair bill that requires government employees to provide more of their own salary to their pension plan, and also considerably weakens the people’s power of collective bargaining.

I can’t blame them. If someone suddenly told me that money was to be taken out of my paycheck so the government could try to wrestle with the $137 million budget deficit, I would be slightly miffed.

However, I won’t be packing my freeze-dried food any time soon. I’m actually more inclined to question the people protesting by day and singing “Kumbaya” by night.

With this deficit, much like the deficit in many other states, the citizens of Wisconsin appear to be sitting around the campfire of government spending, getting warm and playing duck, duck, goose to see who has to stand out in the cold, walking outside the circle and carrying the state’s debt, waiting to pass it off to the next unlucky goose.

Employees in the public sector, just like all the other players involved, are unwilling to step outside the comfort of the fire. In the end, however, there are only two ways to end this childish game.

The first, and most obvious, is to cut spending. If the state controls its own spending, then future cuts will be deemed unnecessary.  This option is an unpopular one, as it would allow less funding for state programs that many people deem necessary for societal good. Governor Walker went this route by reducing contributions to health care and pension plans.

The second solution is to generate more revenue for the state.  This is usually achieved through a tax increase and is also an effective way to reduce the deficit.

It seems, then, that the protesters in Wisconsin need to pack up their Coleman tents, their gorp and their flashlights and decide how they want to deal with the economic predicament they find themselves in.