A Historic Screw-Up

Now that the TABOR family has failed to pass the Republican-controlled state legislature, proponents are searching for glimmers of sunshine in the failure.

In addition to the excuses given by the far fiscal right for why their pet legislative project failed miserably, advocates for the amendment are now making the claim that simply having a vote on an amendment at all was a victory.

Amendment co-author Rep. Jeff Wood (R-Chippewa Falls) even went so far as to call the vote historic.

That historic vote went against the original amendment that was preferred by proponents 66-32 in the Assembly and 21-11 in the Senate for a grand total vote of 87-43 in opposition.

So let's get this straight. An amendment to the state constitution, which drew perhaps the largest concerted opposition movement ever in Wisconsin and found only 33% approval in the Republican-controlled state legislature as a whole, is historic simply because the GOP leadership brought it up for a vote?

Now that's a low bar.

Wood is also trying to take credit for supposedly changing the debate about lowering taxes in Wisconsin from a question of "if" to a question of "how."

Unfortunately for Wood's desperate attempt to find some silver lining in this year's death of TABOR, the debate in Wisconsin was already about how to lower taxes before this amendment was ever announced.

As much as Republicans like to deny it, the Dems have proposed sound ways to provide tax relief in Wisconsin. Two major examples are the recently announced Wisconsin Health Care Partnership Plan and year-old HOPE legislation to directly lower homeowner's property tax bill.

Just because the Republican leadership in the legislature has blatantly ignored proposals like these doesn't mean they don't exist (sort of like meaningful ethics reform).

And I wonder if the megaphones of the far fiscal right will be able to savor the historical importance of the failed amendment vote like Wood. As diehard amendment supporter Owen wrote a couple weeks after the amendment was announced in February:

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We waited very patiently for well over a year for Grothman’s version of TABOR to be introduced, as he promised and as the GOP leadership promised. We gave the new version, which is radically different from the old TABOR, a fair shot and have given it decent reviews. We have spent tons of time, energy, and money for this moment to come.

Don’t screw it up.

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Hey, at least it was a historic screw-up.