Because they rushed a purely partisan power-grabbing masking ban bill through the State Senate without elementary research or a hearing, Wisconsin Republican Death Cultists got to make a bonus addition to an agenda of angst - creating more hunger - that through inertia and obstruction has sped the pandemic's spread across the state.
How can the GOP-led State Assembly convert this found opportunity to make life here even more difficult for low-income residents whom Republicans reflexively diminish, scapegoat and otherwise repress?
By voting Thursday to wipe out Gov. Evers' emergency COVID19 masking order knowing the move would end $49 million in food assistance awarded to states under a federal program that supports states which use emergency powers to fight pandemic-related job losses:
A COVID-19 package Congress passed last year gave states additional funding for food stamps if they have emergency health orders in place. Republican state lawmakers plan to end Wisconsin's health emergency order on Thursday, which would prevent nearly 243,000 households from collecting $49.3 million in assistance, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
Will Republicans in the Assembly do the right thing and decline to take such a nasty vote knowing that their horribly-drafted bill could remove food from the kitchen tables of families in Wisconsin whose breadwinners lost their jobs during the pandemic?
Let's look at the record:
* The GOP-led Legislature delayed passing a COVID action plan last year, and that deliberate stall by small minds in the name of small government cost Wisconsin citizens $25 million in COVID19-related unemployment payments.
* Yes, that's the same program which Republicans hamstrung with insufficient budgets and archaic technology for years because they don't believe in using government to actually help people.
But now they are gleefully using the under-performing unemployment compensation program politically - and accountability free - to bash the Evers' administration with yet another partisan cudgel - a pattern they've used since 2018 - to keep hammering a Governor they recognize only when scheming to weaken his credibility and hijack his authority.
* And do not forget that Wisconsin Republicans during the Walker years used a variety of mean-spirited drug testing mandates, along with punitive work requirements and flat-out arbitrary, cold-hearted take-backs to use food as a weapon against people with the fewest resources to make ends meet.
Or course, Wisconsin's Republican legislative leaders are not above raising their own daily taxpayer-paid, no-receipts-necessary expense account limits whenever their tummies start growling, as they did in 2016:
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos last week quietly expanded a taxpayer-funded perk for state legislators in a move that could increase an Assembly lawmaker's annual pay by more than $1,000, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin has learned.
The decades-old perk, known as per diems, allows legislators to claim daily allowances on top of their $51,000 salaries for each day they work in Madison on state business. Assembly members may claim up to $69 for single-day trips or up to $138 for overnight business.
And this 2018 story shows those limits had been raised again:
Most Assembly legislators could claim up to $157 per overnight visit to Madison last year and up to $78.50 per single-day visit. Senators could claim up to $115 per day regardless of lodging needs.
Bottom line: The Wisconsin GOP-led Legislature will always put itself first.
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| Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on the lookout for his guy at the airport last year. Now he's got the state's poor and unemployed in his sights. |