A Historic Win for Reform in Wisconsin

The state of Wisconsin has once again lived up to its billing as a Midwestern incubator of Big Ideas. In yesterday’s case, when voters resoundingly defeated a liberal effort to recall Governor Scott Walker (R), the Big Idea was that reformers who come armed with the strength of their convictions can carry the day–even against mobs, labor unions, Hollywood, the media, academia and everything else the left throws up these days. All reformers need to do is lead.

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In Walker’s case, his weapon in the fight against out-of-control government was a promise to the voters of Wisconsin that, were he entrusted with their vote, he would bring sweeping reforms to state government. One year ago, Governor Walker fulfilled that promise, and last night the voters rewarded him for his leadership by resoundingly rejecting an effort to remove him from power. It was a historic recall election that focused nationwide attention on what has become an existential threat to state governments — the problem of public-sector employee pensions and benefits running states into the red. Walker unabashedly confronted that threat without straddling a fence or tiptoeing around Big Labor’s Maginot Line. Facing a $3.6 billion deficit and the fourth highest tax burden in the country, Walker instituted policies designed to bring some sanity to state government. Those reforms included asking public sector workers to contribute a modest 5.8 percent of their salaries to their pensions and at least 12.6 percent of their health-care premiums while also limiting the collective bargaining power of public sector unions. (Even that is a small amount, as Heritage’s Jason Richwine shows in a new paper examining the true costs of public pensions.) More...