NEVADA NEWS & VIEWS 01/26/2015

Scott Walker: Driving liberals insane simply by solving problems

by Herman Cain
January 25, 2015

I like this guy.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker really drives liberals crazy. He’s obviously far from alone in that category, of course. Just about any high-profile person who frequently and boldly speaks the truth drives liberals crazy.

But Gov. Walker drives them crazy without really saying all that much. He drives them crazy with action – specifically by applying solutions that liberals insist cannot and should not be applied.

When public employee unions were using their collective bargaining power to drive the state’s employee benefit costs out of control, Gov. Walker took away their right to bargain for benefits. They can still bargain for wages, but now they have to just accept the standard benefit package the state offers them – like most everyone who has a job. Unions went into a rage over this and tried to recall Gov. Walker. Democrats in the Legislature actually fled the state in an attempt to prevent a voting quorum so the measure couldn’t legally pass the state Senate.

(They couldn't stay away forever and keep their jobs. Poor dears.)

That’s the kind of insanity Wisconsin liberals fell into just because their governor solved a problem.

And now he’s doing it to them again. Gov. Walker’s new budget requires that welfare recipients undergo drug tests as a condition of receiving benefits. This solves a simple but important problem, which is that too many welfare recipients are using their state benefits to buy drugs instead of buying food and other things they and their families really need. If the state can identify the drug problem at the outset, it might have a chance to intervene and change the person’s direction before a lot of taxpayer money – and a lot more of that person’s life – is wasted.

Of course, liberals are going ballistic. The Obama Administration is even trying to say that this is illegal. Why? Do they think it’s a good idea for public assistance recipients to spend their taxpayer-funded benefits on drugs?

I’ll actually give them enough credit to answer no to that one. What they do want, though, is for the people who are dependent on government to face no impediment whatsoever to their ability to collect their benefits. Anything that makes it harder for people to be on welfare is opposed by Democrats for a simple reason: People who are dependent on government will always vote overwhelmingly for the party of government.

Democrats want the system to be neat and clean: Government promises you a check. Government sends you a check. You keep voting for the party that loves sending you checks. Anyone who comes along and complicates that arrangement is getting in the way.

The problem is Wisconsin and elsewhere, of course, is that policies like these have been a huge cost to taxpayers and a huge drag on the state’s economic vitality. Lots of people could see that, but not many who manage to get elected to public office actually have the temerity to do something about it. That is in large part because liberals freak out on cue whenever someone tries, and the media takes up their cause for them. Politicians don’t like to take heat if they can avoid it, so they prefer ineffectual half-measures that allow them to claim their “working for change” or whatever, without actually having to deal with the heat that comes when you actually achieve change.

Scott Walker doesn’t seem too bothered by the heat. I like this guy.