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A starving dog will eat almost anything. For close to eight months, ever since Wisconsin’s late, incomplete, and only COVID-19 response bill passed out of the legislature, Wisconsin has been that starving dog, or perhaps more accurately, starving badger. When Robin Vos and his Assembly Republican caucus released a 50-point COVID-19 package on December 1st, we were all quite ravenous to see what was inside it. It didn’t need to be great, it just had to be acceptable. Had it been merely adequate it would have been received with open arms by both Democrats and the general public alike. Begging badgers can’t be choosers, after all.
What we got, however, was far from acceptable, in fact, despite a handful of solid ideas, some of which were continuations of policies already in place, there was enough poison in their gruel to make the whole thing impossible to stomach. Wisconsin needed some government cheese, what it got was closer to the mold Governor Evers used to scrape off of cheese when he was but a young lad in Plymouth, Wisconsin.
In fact, the more closely I examined the package, the more apparent it became that this wasn’t a COVID-19 relief bill, it was a purely political document, full of craven attacks on public education and local control, pandemic mitigation measures that would actually help spread the virus, and just enough liability shields to make the folks at WMC crack a smile. A Grinchy sort of smile, but a smile nonetheless. On top of all that, it included several proposals whose main function was to snatch ever more power away from the Governor and into the hands of the gerrymandered Republican majority and the Joint Finance Committee.
There isn’t enough space here to list all of what was included, but if we focus just on the education and healthcare segments we get a pretty good idea what the package is all about.
First, healthcare
The Good
- Ensuring healthcare providers are adequately reimbursed for services to MA patients
- Ensuring testing and vaccination is covered under MA and SeniorCare
- Increasing local public health staffing capacity (though not guaranteeing any funding for it)
- Expanding rapid antigen testing
- Extending the use of the current public health emergency dashboard to future pandemics
The Bad
- Setting an arbitrary end date of June 30th for multiple provisions, instead of tying sunset to actually meeting public health benchmarks
- Putting the GOP-controlled Joint Finance Committee (JFC) in control of our vaccine distribution plan
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The Deadly
- Restricting local health departments’ ability to impose capacity restrictions on businesses
- Prohibiting employers (including nursing homes) from requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for staff
- Prohibiting health departments from limiting gathering at churches (while remaining oddly silent on synagogues, mosques, and other places of worship)
- Forcing nursing homes to allow visitors in their facilities, which contain the most vulnerable people
Next, public education
The Good
- Grants for schools to purchase personal electronic devices to facilitate distance learning
The Bad
- Forcing school districts to accept open enrollment students outside the normal process
- Forcing teachers to teach from school buildings by January 31
- Forcing districts to approve virtual schooling by ⅔ majority, and requiring re-authorization every 2 weeks
The Sabotage
- Forcing districts to pay parents of children who attend virtual school for at least 50% of the semester $371, which would cost Milwaukee Public Schools alone over $28 million
I am thrilled that Assembly Republicans have finally woken up and recognized that something needs to be done to address the out-of-control pandemic in our state. If this is their opening salvo, we have a long way to go to reach a place where it could earn my vote. Let’s call the legislature into session and have that debate. Unfortunately, even this moldy-cheese bill package is unlikely to see the light of day, as new Senate Majority leader Devin LeMahieu has said they are not coming back before the new year.
So here we sit, almost 8 months into a pandemic that has infected over 400,000 Wisconsinites, hospitalized almost 18,000, and tragically killed over 3,600 of our neighbors, with no plan our legislature can agree on. Just a bunch of hungry badgers, while the party in power eats cake.
