[img_assist|nid=41526|title=|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=99|height=185]Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) is defending the Walker administration's new de-compensation plan for state employees, which freezes pay for two more years. Scotty Fitz said he was "proud" the GOP budget didn't include mass layoffs, "deep" pay cuts (what, six percent or more effective pay cuts for added benefit costs isn't "deep"?), furloughs. Or tax hikes, except for those well hidden but very real tax hikes Walker's budget imposed on lower and middle income taxpayers, of course. Also, the indirect -- and vast -- service and pay cuts required by what Walker called "tools" for local governments.
Fitzgerald summarized: "There are 240,000 people out of work in Wisconsin, and they aren't getting automatic pay raises either."
Maybe not, Scotty, but absent similar outrage from the governor and yourself, you and the state's other elected lawmakers are about to get what amounts to an automatic pay raise for the jobs you hold (assuming you keep on holding them after another term).
And what's this nonsense about "automatic" pay raises for rank and file state employees? There ain't no such animal -- never has been. That's why many of the employees depended on collective bargaining: The state was historically stingy.