River News: Our View

Back in 1983, the incomparable Woody Allen produced a movie, Zelig, about a man who so desperately wanted to be liked and to fit in that he took on the persona of those around him.

It was not malicious. Zelig, who came to be known internationally as a human chameleon, had a bizarre disorder — around Nazis, he was a Nazi. Around Republicans, he was a Republican. Around blacks, he became black, culturally and physically.

Zelig was a movie, of course, but this week life became art when Gov. Tony Evers, whom we should call Gov. Zelig from now on, became a human chameleon himself during his budget address to the state and to the legislature.

Perhaps he just became a political chameleon, but, during the speech, the governor became a bit of everything and everybody. For a moment, he was Donald Trump. For a while he was an old country-club Republican, you know, the kind that likes to cut taxes and spend drunkenly. Then he wagged on like a hammer-and-sickle bureaucrat, and who could say he’s not, given the glasses and the fake folksy language. Nobody but a career pencil pusher says ‘darn’ these days. Before we knew it, he was something else again, a traditional tax-and-spend Democrat. 

About the only people he didn’t try to become was Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. But even the sickest of sickos knows better than to morph into wokesters in the wilderness now.

There he was summoning Trump, his hair almost glowing orange, calling for an end to taxes on tips: “And I want us to work together to pass my proposal to support students and workers in our service industries by letting them keep the tips they earn tax-free. Let’s eliminate taxes on cash tips.”

His proposal? Zelig!

He looked over at Republicans and suddenly, stunningly, there he was with an elephant’s trunk swinging wildly, shouting out tax cuts from the rafters.

And huge tax cuts: He proposed to nearly double the personal income tax exemption, cut property taxes, end the sales tax on everyday goods and more, a bonanza of billions: “My plan will provide nearly $2 billion in tax relief through efforts to lower property taxes, eliminate the sales tax on several everyday expenses, and cut income taxes for middle-class Wisconsinites, including homeowners, renters, veterans, and seniors.”

Never mind that Republicans proposed even more tax cuts that he vetoed last budget. Zelig!

Just as suddenly, and without a word of warning — the wild transformations were sending usually zombie-eyed lawmakers into seizures — Evers looked at Democrats and transformed himself, right before our very eyes, into Fighting Bob La Follette. Now he was promising to raise taxes massively on the rich and the productive.

Only the rich, of course, and those who invest in and make the economy grow. The governor wants a new tax bracket for the highest earners and a cap on the manufacturing tax credit, so, all in all, while cutting taxes by $2 billion with his right hand, he would raise taxes by $2.4 billion with his left hand.

Zelig!

It was amazing to watch the political chameleon change colors every few seconds, from red to blue and back again, and then — we should have known it — there he was in full purple, the Uniparty man, when he talked about the gobs and gobs and gobs of money he was going to spend.

It was as if Mitch McConnell had risen from hell and taken over the governor’s body. Of course, we knew better because Mitch McConnell is not quite in hell yet. But, with all his spending proposals, we think Gov. Zelig would be a good choice to play McConnell in his upcoming post-mortem biopic.

All totaled, Gov. Zelig said he wanted to spend about 18 percent more in the biennium, about $55.5 billion. He wants to throw $1 billion into the Stewardship fund over the next 10 years. He would add $4 billion in education “investments,” while freezing voucher school enrollment. He would subsidize child care providers without incentivizing or empowering parents.

In the movie, of course, Zelig was a very sick character who could do a lot of damage. In one scene in the mockumentary, the writer Saul Bellow, playing himself, described Zelig this way: “He was, of course, very amusing, but at the same time touched a nerve in people, perhaps in a way in which they would prefer not to be touched.”

The same could be said of Evers’s budget. It would touch everybody, only not in the way most would want to be touched. Despite the smoke and mirrors, it’s a tax increase of about $400 million — $400 million less to invest in the private economy — but even that would not cover the massive spending increases he proposed.

Gov. Zelig wants to increase the number of state employees by 880 employees, once again transferring the states’ wealth from productive citizens to endlessly regulating grifters who produce nothing but misery. It means bigger government and less private economy and that means a lower standard of living. The only people who like to be fondled like that are bureaucrats.

The largesse would go to winners and losers the government picks, not to the individuals and parents and families whom Gov. Zelig droned on about.

For instance, he correctly said there’s no excuse for the state’s child care crisis: “Putting two young kids in child care in Wisconsin costs more than the average rent or mortgage. In 2023, child care costs consumed as much as a third of a family’s household income. Our workforce and economy can’t afford more parents leaving their jobs because they can’t afford child care.”

But did he propose direct relief for those families? Nope, he proposed giving the money to providers chosen by the government: “Let’s invest in our child care providers so they can hire more staff, reduce wait lists, and lower the cost of child care so we can get working parents and families a little more breathing room in their household budgets.”

Why not give working parents more breathing room by giving them the subsidy they need as well as the choice of where to spend that subsidy?

Thankfully, Republican leaders have already seen the movie version of Zelig and were well prepared for Evers’s version. In particular, Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) picked up on Evers’s Zelig-like transformations.

“Gov. Evers’s budget address played like a ‘greatest hits’ album of Republican bills that he vetoed just last session,” Nedweski said. “On the A-side: Track 1 – funding early literacy; Track 2 – tax cuts; Track 3 – lowering costs for families. Sounds familiar, but not quite the same. Fiscal conservatism is cool again, thanks to the President. With as much as the governor mentioned Trump tonight, it seems even Democrats are at least pretending to be on the bandwagon.”

Nedweski also pointed out that Evers came offering a bouquet of tax cuts but vetoed much more in the last budget.

“In a desperate attempt to pretend to be a conservative, the governor touted $2 billion in tax cuts, including income tax reductions for middle-class Wisconsinites and seniors,” she said. “This comes after he previously vetoed $4.4 billion in middle class tax cuts last session, including a GOP proposal to provide Wisconsin seniors with a tax-free retirement. The B-side no one listens to: billions in new spending on expanded entitlement programs that are far more expensive than his underwhelming tax cuts.”

How well said. Nedweski did pick up that Evers is usually Gov. Evers, and that Gov. Zelig only seems to show up at certain times.

“It seems that we only hear from ‘Tax Cut Tony’ in a year leading up to re-election,” she said. “His claim to be interested in easing property tax burdens is downright laughable after he abused his partial veto power last session to increase property taxes on Wisconsin families for the next 400 years. ‘Hypocritical’ is the only way to describe his insincere claims to want property tax relief for families. His budget is like a bad cover of good Republican policy, but the original album is far superior.”

Nedweski warned citizens not to be fooled by Evers’s cheap bootlegs.

It’s good advice. In the movie, the narrator said of Zelig: “To the Ku Klux Klan, Zelig, a Jew who was able to transform himself into a Negro or Indian, was a triple threat.”

So too for Gov. Zelig. As a big taxing Democrat who can transform himself into a big spending uniparty member and then into a Stalinist bureaucrat at the drop of a fedora, Gov. Zelig is a triple threat to all of us.

Please, somebody get this man some help.