Reviewing Wisconsin's Lawmakers

For this critique, I am choosing to follow an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel entitled "State lawmakers follow Wall Street on employee bonuses." The article title is misleading, however, as the point of the article ends up being that while state lawmakers are eager to pounce all over Wall Street and make it look bad, on the whole our lawmakers are doing the same thing as Wall Street in that they are giving themselves bonuses, while the average people deal with being laid off, having salary reduction, or having hours cut.

On the whole (there are some exceptions) state lawmakers paid out some very handsome bonuses to their employees in the last quarter of 2008, when our nation was beginning its economic downturn. The article says that "...all but one (Wisconsin state lawmakers) voted to impose huge taxes on these payments (the bonuses paid to Wall Street employees)" (Bice, 2009, A1). Basically, funding policy for the offices of various representatives at the state and federal level is that each office is appropriated a certain amount of public funds each year. Any excess funding needs to be used or is lost, and it seems there is no state or federal law limiting the amount of excess funding that can be given to the staff of various representatives as bonuses.

What was influencing our state and national policy toward Wall Street? The answer is pretty obvious to most people, and to most people who have a decent set of morals it seems that it is not right to pay out bonuses to a small group of people who ran their own businesses into the ground, but yet who still have plenty enough money to provide for all of their needs. This comes while other Americans are losing their jobs and are struggling just to pay for the basics of life, and in particular the two main items of recent discussion which many Americans cannot afford have been mortgages and medical care.

How does this effect the social welfare system? Well, government is set up to serve and protect the people who have elected its officials. Rather than sharing the burden and doing what is best to serve the people who have made its existence possible, our state lawmakers are instead choosing to serve themselves with the use it or lose it public funding. Tom Petri, in particular, was placed in the spotlight in this article, as he paid out bonuses totaling more than $100,000 dollars in the latter part of last year. At least one bonus ran as high as $14,600 for one staff member, and an average of $6,500 per staff member. In fact, Petri, Tammy Baldwin, Gwen Moore, and Jim Sensenbrenner all "...increased their payrolls more than 20% in the final three months of 2008" (Bice, 2009, A8). Bice goes on to make an excellent point in that Petri voted in favor of taxing large bonuses to AIG and other companies bailed out by taxpayer money. All this money could be going to help people who are supposedly "lazy" and undeserving of any help. The options for helping in a financial sense are limitless - people of all ages have expensive medical bills; people in the Fox Valley have to worry about how much food they might have on any given night (St. Joe's Food Pantry had very low levels of food in the latter months of last year); heck, college students could use some more grant money to help pay off school bills, especially social work students who can count on making less than others in most other professions (Bice, 2009).

Some of the defenses for these bonuses included "privacy concerns" and Niel Wright, a staff member of Petri's, stated the following: "We're required to provide some information publicly...We do what's required but don't want to go beyond that" (Bice, 2009, A1). Later in the article, he is quoted as saying, "I'm still waiting for my $75 million bonus (in reference to Wall Street employees)...Yeah, it hasn't come down yet. I must say I'm outraged" (Wright made $113,000 and was paid an $8,000 bonus last year) (Bice, 2009, A1). Conor Sweeney, a staff member of Paul Ryan's, stated, "Our office does not publicly discuss individual staff personnel decisions" (Bice, 2009, A1). Tom Schreibel, chief of staff for Jim Sensenbrenner, stated, "The bonuses are based on merit and the product they produce" (Bice, 2009, A8).

While the majority defended their position, it is important to remember that there are people who do the right thing with this money. Senator Feingold and Representative David Obey never hand out bonuses. Representative Ron Kind, who has given bonuses in the past, was fair in that he withheld those this year because of the recession. Senator Herb Kohl has a reputation for giving millions of salary back, but his staff declined to say how much he paid in bonuses last year.

Obviously, I am strongly not in favor of these bonuses, especially to people who are already paid enough to provide for all of their needs in the first place (we also know they have the best health insurance plans). There needs to be some regulation of what is done with the extra money, as it could easily do more good in other places, especially in our social welfare system. Regulation seems to be required because these people currently have no supervision of what is done with this funding, and for the most part, they are choosing not to do the right thing. My personal view is if the nation as a whole is suffering, that since the government is expected to provide leadership, it should also do so in a financial sense and share the burden with the rest of us. Not only that, but our state leadership is complaining about not having enough money and having to cut spending! Well, cut salaries for God's sake! Even though salaries could be cut, these employees still have enough money to provide for all of their needs, while many others do not. This would not solve our budget problem, but it certainly would help out a lot. I just cannot express how angry I am because I know all the ways more money could help me provide for my needs and make my life easier, and then I envision all the people out there who are worse off than I am. But, such is the way our world works, and hopefully this article, which made the front page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, will lead to some action that makes the situation right.

Bibliography

Bice, D. (2009, April 20). State lawmakers follow Wall Street on employee bonuses. The

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, pp. A1, A20.