Dems Are Making Scott Walker Soft?

Brian Fraley thinks that the Milwaukee County Board overrode almost every budget veto made by Scott Walker because Walker wasn't tough enough.

According to Fraley, "someone seems to have told Scott to extend an olive branch to the County Board with the hopes that this soft approach would curry their favor. All it did was empower them. They viewed his passivity as a weakness, and they successfully thwarted much of his agenda this budget cycle."

Who could that "someone" be? Fraley suggests the culprit a few paragraphs earlier: "Perhaps this failure is a result of some of the personnel Scott has himself empowered. While they may be good, decent individuals, he has life-long partisan democrats, bureaucrats, and liberals in many key leadership positions on his staff and throughout his Administration."

Of course, Fraley offers no examples in the post of how Walker "extend[ed] an olive branch to the County Board" during the latest budget cycle. And Fraley conveniently ignores the fact that last year, when Walker took a hard-line approach by vetoing the entire budget -- declaring, with his hands metaphorically thrown it the air, "It's their budget now" -- he essentially came away with the same thing as he did this time around: nothing.

The fact is that the board has enough votes to override Walker on just about every point of the budget, and over the years Walker's incessantly combative relationship with the board hasn't exactly endeared him to a large percentage of supervisors. While he doesn't need to be drinking buddies with anyone on the board, a respectful working relationship between the executive and the board is clearly in the best interest of the county; and hitting the talk radio circuit at every chance to bash the supervisors isn't the most effective way to forge respect.

But even more fundamental than that is Walker's unwillingness and inability to engage in meaningful budget dialogue with the board as a result of his zero-tax increase campaign pledge, which he'll almost surely make again when he officially declares his re-election bid for next year.

Walker isn't extending any olive branches when it comes to the budget. To be sure, he can't sit down at a table with supervisors to negotiate because starting and ending at zero provides him with nothing of substance to invest in a compromise.

But Fraley, ever the political consultant, is attempting the trick of making a weakness (Walker can't compromise) into a strength (Walker shouldn't compromise) by claiming it's not that Walker's approach was too rigid, it's that it was too soft.

And that line about liberal moles in the Walker administration who are causing the softness? Just pure rhetorical gold.

Scott Walker's Annual Rite of Passing the Buck

Mid-November is here, which means a few things.

Football games are starting to have "playoff implications." I'm sick of raking. Thanksgiving is surprisingly close (it seems to sneak up on me more each year). And Scott Walker is about the demonstrate his penchant for negotiation by vetoing the county budget back to his original proposal.

Last year was the best. Rather than use a veto pen, Walker pulled out his veto grenade and tried to blow up the entire budget. The County Board tossed the grenade right back in a 14-5 override of that super-sized veto, leading Walker to declare in seemingly helpless fashion: "It's their budget now."

In reality, though, the veto grenade didn't remove Walker's responsibility for the annual county budget; rather, it just eliminated any opportunity he had to work with the board on any of the finer points in his budget, such as modernizing the county pool system.

This year isn't going to be any different. The County Board passed its version of this year's budget by the same 14-5 veto-proof margin, and Walker has indicated that he would use the pen, not the grenade this time, to bring the board's proposed 3.7 percent tax increase -- or $6.16 on the average annual property tax bill in the county -- down to zero in order to maintain his no-tax increase campaign pledge.

But due to this pledge, there really isn't much difference between Walker's veto pen and his veto grenade. Walker's starting and ending point is zero, which allows for no middle ground.

Granted, there's nothing that requires the board to negotiate with Walker, but at least none of them made a pledge that constrains their ability to even discuss a compromise. If Walker could come to the table with a few good faith concessions, perhaps that could enhance his ability to press to retain some other areas of his budget.

Instead, just as the uncompromising pledges took the ability to strike a deal away from dozens of legislators in the latest state budget cycle, Walker's pledge removes any chance he would have to push for his positions at the negotiating table; after all, he can't expect to get anything if there's nothing he's willing to give.

And it's one thing when a handful of legislators aren't around to deal; it's a little more conspicuous when the executive is absent from the table.