Charlie Sykes of the premiering-Monday Right Wisconsin:

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is suggesting that the next state budget could cut middle class income taxes by as much as $350 million. That translates into about $200 per family… over two years.

Or, put another way, 27 cents per day. That’s as opposed to what preceded Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled Legislature:

But, as painful as this might be, let’s put this in context. Even a cut of that magnitude would not even come close to undoing all of the damage wrought by Jim Doyle’s last budget binge, when the Democrat loaded the state’s economy with $2.2 billion in new taxes.

That included a $311 million income  tax hike through the creation of a “very high earner income tax bracket,” a new 7.75% top rate that jacked up taxes by 15% on income over $232,660 for singles and  $310,000 for married couples. (BTW: the top tax rate in the tax hell of Illinois is…. 5%). As Republicans repeatedly reminded us during the last campaign, this is the tax rate paid by many small businesses, the folks who Walker is counting on to create new jobs.

Early reports suggest that Walker and the GOP will leave that Doyle increase intact, cutting only taxes below $200,000.(This will also result in lower tax bills for high earners, but won’t affect the marginal tax rate they pay.)

It’s unclear whether he intends to repeal or roll back any of the other Doyle taxes, including “combined reporting,” which raised business taxes by $187 million (the tax was tweaked but not repealed in the first budget), or the “Hospital Assessment,” which dropped a $650 million bomb on medical costs.

And people wonder why job creation lags in this state. Job creation lags in this state because Walker and the Legislature haven’t undone the malignant damage Doyle and Democrats did to this state. The business climate in this state continues to trail most states because the state continues to be overtaxed, overregulated, and overgoverned, and that has not changed nearly enough during the Walker administration.

Wisconsin has the fourth highest state and local taxes in the U.S. Wisconsin’s business tax climate is ranked 43rd among the states. An income tax cut amounting to 27 cents per day isn’t going to change Wisconsin’s horrible tax ratings.

This minimal tax cut nonetheless earns The Capital Times‘ pejorative label of “political [and] irresponsible.” (You should be shocked — shocked! — to find that politics is going on in the state Capitol.)

To that, Dave Blaska — apparently one of the few people who worked at The Capital Times who actually had a functioning brain — replies:

Now for some facts, however inconvenient: Gov. Walker and the Republican Legislature inherited a $3.6 billion structural deficit from Jim Doyle and erased it. Yes, they balanced the budget without raising taxes. They put in place tools for local governments to better control their expenses (see: Act 10). And they managed to replenish the state’s rainy day fund, although it was never “plenished” in the first place.

All of which is very agitating to the anti-Capitalist Times.

Allowing the people a break on their taxes in this slow/no-growth economy is condemned as “political.” That is another way of saying that it is popular. (The word itself is derived from the root for “people.”) …

Can’t we be honest, Capital Timers? What you really want is MORE government spending. You want more government spending because you believe that government knows better how to spend that income. In a state that must balance its budget by law, that requires MORE taxation. That is why you are opposed to a tax break for the middle class.

Sykes adds:

There are undoubtedly good reasons — some political, some fiscal — for not pushing a bolder tax cut. One administration insider tells me: “Eliminating combined reporting and/or the top tax bracket as an example are too easy to demagogue, especially when cutting tax rates at the lower brackets has the effect of reducing everyone’s taxes.”

The administration insider needs to observe which party controls the Legislature. Wisconsin Democrats would demagogue a proclamation about motherhood if Republicans created it. Who cares? The Democrats’ favorite president signed off on the end of Social Security tax cuts that dwarf a 27-cent-per-day state tax cut.

The Legislature needs to enact, to be bold, the largest tax cut in this state’s history, whatever level that is, followed by permanent (as in constitutional) changes to prevent the next Democratic majority from raising taxes. And if that takes substantial cutting of Govzilla, so much the better.

On Friday afternoon came the news that the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a federal judge and declared the Act 10 public-employee collective bargaining reforms were constitutional.

That probably ends any hope of a federal case against Act 10. It may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but it seems unlikely that the court would even agree to take it up. It is, after all, an issue of policy, and while there is a constitutional right to belonging to a union, there is no constitutional right to collective bargaining.

WisPolitics.com:

Among other things, the unions argued Gov. Scott Walker and GOP lawmakers created two classes of employees in exempting some public safety workers from the changes. They also argued Walker specifically exempted some public safety unions because they had backed him politically in the 2010 guv race.

But the appeals court rejected those arguments, writing the state was free to impose the collective bargaining limits on state employees and had a rational reason for exempting some public workers from the changes.

The court took note of the reaction to the introduction of the legislation, including the thousands that descended on the Capitol to protest and some public employees who called in sick to join in, as an example of why the state had a rational reason for exempting some public safety workers.

“Distinguishing between public safety unions and general employee unions may have been a poor choice, but it is not unconstitutional,” the court wrote.

The Wall Street Journal:

The unions argued that Mr. Walker’s limits on collective bargaining, the requirements that a union be recertified each year by a majority of its members and the elimination of the payroll deduction of dues were illegal because they exempted cops and firefighters. Supposedly this amounts to discrimination by creating two categories of public employees. They also argued that the payroll deduction clause violates the First Amendment.

Ponder that claim for a moment: Wisconsin’s failure to automatically subtract union duties from paychecks endangers free speech because it requires organized labor to persuade its own members that its activities are valuable enough to contribute to voluntarily. Normally such moonshot claims would get tossed out of court, but the unions found two credulous lower court judges who invalidated parts of the law.

The Equal Protection claims were first to go. The Seventh Circuit held that it was rational to fear a retaliatory strike from police and firemen that could endanger public safety, and thus the two-tier system protects a legitimate state interest.

As for the First Amendment, the court ruled that Wisconsin has no obligation to help unions fund political or other spending, in accord with a slew of Supreme Court and appeals court precedents. “The Bill of Rights enshrines negative liberties,” wrote Judge Joel Flaum in the 74-page decision. “It directs what government may not do to its citizens, rather than what it must do for them.”

Automatic payroll deductions aren’t a right but a subsidy for political speech—a special privilege created by the government, not the permanent monopoly entitlement that government unions imagine.

The same goes for public-employee unions, and Judge Flaum notes that to protect another legitimate state interest—affordable government and “a rational belief that public sector unions are too costly for the state”—one alternative to the Walker reforms “would appear to be the outright elimination of all general employee unions.” Hmmm. For now, Mr. Walker and Wisconsin taxpayers can savor one more vindication.

Wisconsin Democrats declared the reforms were divisive. As if anything Walker’s predecessor did — say, increasing state income taxes — wasn’t divisive. In case you haven’t noticed, politics is divisive, at any level. Anything that requires a yes–no vote is divisive. If the number one criterion of responsible politics was not being divisive, elective bodies would do nothing beyond approving the minutes and passing resolutions for Wisconsin ________ Day.