Jay Weber Show transcript 4-13-21 7:40am
Do you know that-despite getting somewhere around a half a billion dollars or more of federal money- Tom Barrett is still lobbying state lawmakers to allow the city to increase its sales tax?
This is nuts.
MacIver Institute caught it-as they were covering a joint finance meeting.
This is the committee that really builds the budget.
Republicans who run the legislature have made it clear that they intend to scrap all of Evers’ plan and build off of the same budget they’ve been building for years-dating back into the walker era.
So, there is-zero chance-Tony Evers’ budget is adopted, and yet, he and Mandela are going thru the dog-and-pony show of holding town hall hearings on it around the state, in what is nothing more than a political exercise. They want to be able to claim that they have ‘heard from the people’.
And ‘this is the people’s budget’...And yet- it gives up your game, when you write and release the budget-before!-you get input from the people.
So those hearings are a charade...but Barrett popped up at the one that matters- joint finance- to beg for money. Let us locals increase our level of local sales tax.
And I’m going to play the entire chunk of audio that MacIver news service has on it’s website...but the context is this: Tom Barrett and the city of Milwaukee have received-at least-a half a billion dollars in state aid from these various covid-19 relief bills.
It is more than enough to cover the losses they have seen in city sales tax revenue because Barrett, himself, has kept restaurants and retailers closed, or at ridiculously low capacity.
The city of Milwaukee-and very major US city-should be flush with cash as a result of these incredibly generous, and largely unnecessary, floods of federal money that have come their way.
So what’s tom Barrett doing at a JFC meeting-begging for the ability to tax even more?
He explains.
Despite Hundreds Of Millions In Fed COVID Aid, Mayor Barrett Still Wants A Higher Sales Tax
So, Mayor Barrett testified that despite at least half a billion dollars in ‘found’ federal money, he needs a higher sales tax to address the city’s massive pension problem.
A massive pension problem that- he!-and past democrat mayors- by and large, created.
If you notice Mayor Barrett did not acknowledge the fact that it was the politicians running the city that agreed to pay for, and keep funding the “costly” pension program that they don’t have a way to pay for.
He didn’t acknowledge that he has been the city’s mayor for sixteen years and that he and the alderman during his entire tenure have been negotiating, and renegotiating, and renegotiating, the contracts of city employees and agreeing to ever-increasing wage and benefits packages.
And Barrett doesn’t acknowledge that-at any time during his sixteen year tenure- he and the lefty alderman who control the city could have decided to do things differently.
You know- shift to a non-pension system all-together. How about capping this pension system at its’ current workers and retirees and moving all future city workers into a 403b, or 401k style retirement-only?
Barrett has been mayor for-sixteen years!
Even ten years ago, he and alderman could have had the hard, responsible discussion and said, okay, in 2020, ten years from now, let’s cut the cord on the pensions and transition all new employees over to a non-pension system.
My point is- he could have even taken the wimpy route-and put the move off for a decade-and eventually helped the city move beyond a pension debt that is starting to consume the entire city budget.
But he didn’t.
Barrett and the council just kept caving more, and more, and more to the employee unions, and growing that unsustainable pension debt more and more and more.
Because they are liberals and big spending democrats who are in bed with the unions want to take the easy way out.
That is the hard truth of this.
I also noticed that the mayor only talked about the fire and police unions. That’s because they are the unions that will push back on his administration the most-and push back on his boneheaded decisions like cutting more and more police officers as crime rises and rises.
Barrett acts like this is a problem due to the emergency services workers....and so I’ll say it again: one of the only reasons that local government exists- is to provide police and fire protection!
Period! There are very few other reasons that we-really need- a local government and yet, these city governments have ballooned into having multi-billion dollar budgets-
Even a medium sized city like Milwaukee has working on a billion dollar budget for decades..
Folks- the 2020 city budget was 1.6-billion dollars.
For what?
That’s not including schools. That’s just police, fire, snow and garbage removal- which cost a fraction of the 1.6-billion...and the rest is wasted on all sorts of lefty nonsense that we don’t need.
Along with a lot of debt payments- massive debt payments-that Mayor Tom Barrett, himself, is responsible for!
You would be shocked at how much of this 1.6-billion dollars goes toward ‘debt service’ just to pay off the past loans that Barrett and company have borrowed over the last sixteen years.
And now he’s in front of the state legislature begging for the ability to tax more?
The final point is this: Barrett goes out of his way to insist: I cannot use any of that half-billion dollars in covid-19 relief money to pay our pension costs. It’s not allowed. I can’t do it.
And he’s right about that- to an extent.
He is correct that he cannot get 500-million dollars from the feds and just funnel it into the city’s pension program.
But money is fungible.
Fungible simply means- interchangeable- as in- one pot of money can be replaced with another pot of money.
And what mayor Barrett-and every other mayor and county exec and governor can do-is use the federal money to pay other city bills- and then take the money that was supposed to go toward those bills-and pay into the pension.
That is a dodge that-every- mayor, county exec, and governor is going to be using as they put their budgets together with this small flood of money they all got from the feds.
And let’s not pretend that it’s not going to happen.
But here’s Barrett...sitting on half a billion dollars in ‘found’ federal money....and he still shows up in front of joint finance hat in hand...crying poor.
He’s proving what a terrible mayor he is, my friends.
But the bottom line is that he’s been the mayor of Milwaukee for -sixteen years! and should have tackled the city’s pension problem long ago.
He has refused to. Because Tom Barrett doesn’t do anything hard or difficult. That much we’ve learned about the guy...
He certainly doesn’t have the integrity, nor the stones, to take on the unions, and so he’s now got this city budget and the pension fund so screwed up that the spending and debt service he’s created is unsustainable...
And he’s still crying poor and blaming others.
story and photo credit: MacIver Institute