Every time you think they’ve gone as far as they can go, Republican governors take it another step. They’re not content to just cut taxes on the wealthiest and cut services working families rely on. No, they simultaneously raise taxes on the middle class. They don’t just cut education: NJ Gov. Chris Christie cut education so much a judge ruled his cuts were too deep to stand. They don’t just increase the amount public workers pay into pension funds: Maine Gov. Paul LePage did that while exempting himself from the increase.
It’s that kind of brazenness that led one of Working America's Ohio members to tell us
If he (Kasich) has his way he will privatize everything and there will be a toll booth at the end of my driveway.
So, yeah, there is a backlash, and it’s not just in Wisconsin.
Working America’s organizers on the ground across the country are telling us that in state after state that elected Republican governors and legislatures just last November, the people whose doors we knock on are outraged by what those newly-elected governors and legislators are now doing. They’re connecting dots that the entire rightwing message machine is dedicated to keeping unconnected.
In Wisconsin, for instance, the people our organizers approach want to talk about why Gov. Walker is giving corporations tax breaks while balancing the budget on the backs of working people. They’re connecting Walker’s budget cuts to their own lives, to the health care senior citizens won’t be getting, the education kids won’t be getting.
Our members in Maine and Minnesota and Pennsylvania are bringing up Wisconsin’s struggle themselves, and they too are connecting the dots on what’s going on in their own states. In Pennsylvania, where Gov. Tom Corbett is proposing massive cuts to education, about half the people we talk to bring up education as soon as the state budget is mentioned. According to one of our Field Directors,
Since I started working with Working America, I have never seen people this educated and aware about an issue before. People know—and say—that 50% of higher education funding may be cut, and the implications of that for working people.
In Ohio, people are obviously noticing the Gov. Kasich wants to sell off state assets at fire-sale prices.
Governors like Walker and Corbett and Kasich and LePage and Christie and Florida’s Rick Scott are waging an unprecedented war against working families, a war that hits the incomes, health care, and job security of adults, the education of children, the job prospects of young adults, the retirement security and health care of seniors. The scope of what they’re trying to do is breathtaking. And the fact that they thought they could get away with it says a lot about how accustomed conservative politicians are to having their actions examined. (How accustomed? Not very.)
The good news is, while for years now politicians like Walker, Corbett, Kasich, LePage, Christie, and Scott have been serving the interests of the corporate CEOs who pour millions into helping elect them, this time they may really have overreached. Working people are noticing what’s going on—not just political junkies and activists, but people who identify as moderates and conservatives but who did not sign on for this.
Something is building. Working people are finding their voices and their strength.
Keep the momentum going by visiting I am Working America and telling us why you’re in this fight, and by going to We-R-1 and finding out how you can join in a day of solidarity on April 4.
Crossposted from our Main Street blog.