Gov. Snyder started it and Democrats are fixin to finish it.
The new governor may live to regret the day he coined the phrase
"shared sacrifice" because now every budget move he makes is being
filtered through that prism and the D's are exploiting it for
everything it is worth.
Item: Governor proposes pension tax on seniors with the money going
to fund business tax relief.
Democrats argue that's not shared sacrifice. That is one-side
sacrifice.
The gov's guys feebly try to counteract that by saying, in the long
run businesses will create more jobs and that will help everyone.
Nice try but it doesn't trump the glaring fact that seniors share in
the pain now while business gets a pass.
Item: The governor's budget director is trying to squeeze $180
million in new concessions from state workers while simultaneously
refusing to take a pay cut from his hefty $250,000 a year.
Where's the shared sacrifice in that little arrangement the D's want
to know?
Item: The governor calls on local governments to extract a 20%
health care co-pay from all their workers but in the state legislature,
lawmakers don't cough up that much.
Enter Democratic Rep. Jon Switalski with a plan to do that and
couple with it a 20% cut in legislative pay checks.
This could get embarrassing because the Republicans have the votes
to pass the Switalski proposal but will they?
If they sit on it, the R's look two-faced in that they want everyone
to share in the sacrifice but not themselves. But getting the votes to
do it will be tough as legislators are like everyone else i.e. they
want everyone else to sacrifice.
This is a win-win for the D's. If the R's balk, the D's hit them for
that but if they pass the cuts, the D's can take the credit for that.
Maybe Switalski and company should send a thank you note to the
governor for creating this shared sacrifice connemdrum.