Seven Ways Scott Walker and the GOP Are Still Trying to Screw Wisconsin's Poor, Working Class, and Just About Everybody Else

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has taken a machete to the state’s budget and has clearly relished every swipe he’s taken to social programs and civil rights. The spirit of the enormous protests that sprang to life in February over Walker’s proposal to ban collective bargaining is stronger than ever.

Thousands of people descended upon the Capitol this week to protest both Monday’s State Supreme Court decision to reinstate the collective bargaining ban and the governor’s proposed two-year budget, which includes hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts and is currently moving through the legislature.

Everything from health care to the right to vote is under attack, and with the next two-year budget currently under debate and a slew of controversial bills at different legislative stages, terrifying changes loom for 5.5 million Wisconsinites. Here are seven ways Wisconsin Republicans are waging war against the poor and working class people of Wisconsin. 

1. The proposed budget contains so many terrible changes to BadgerCare, Wisconsin’s low-income health care program, that they could almost have their own list. Among the worst is a proposal to drop men from the program entirely, and a proposal to require parental consent before minors can get birth control pills. How are these two things connected? A representative for Pro-Life Wisconsin argued that the 7,000 men currently on BadgerCare don’t need subsidized access to STD testing and condoms because BadgerCare already provides contraception to women.

If young, poor women are discouraged from getting birth control because of parental consent laws and young, poor men have no access to low-cost medical care, there will be more sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies. It’s not a surprise that state-funded health care is at risk, but it’s much more common to see women’s reproductive care attacked than men’s.

2. A program to help adults with disabilities live independently faces an enrollment freeze in the new budget, which will leave nearly 17,000 men and women throughout the state without vital resources over the next two years. Family Care helps provide a wide range of services such as in-home care, supported living communities, meal delivery, and job training to help keep more than 31,000 people integrated with their communities; waiting lists for private resources like housing can be well over a decade. Cutting off enrollment in Family Care is a message from Scott Walker to men and women already disproportionately affected by poverty and discrimination that in his eyes they’re less than human.

3. Different cities have different housing needs, right? Not according to a bill introduced by the State Senate. The measure would prohibit local governments from making laws related to landlord-tenant relationships. According to Madison’s Capitol Times, the bill would void a law that prevents landlords from discriminating against potential tenants because they are on public assistance. The bill’s lead author, Sen. Frank Lasee, has made no statements about what low-income families are supposed to do for housing when landlords are free to discriminate against them and the state budget has no money to help the homeless.

4. Scott Walker isn’t just targeting the city-dwelling poor; a budget provision would force the University of Wisconsin System to return $37 million in grant money that was intended to provide broadband access to rural communities. It would also prohibit the UW System from funding WiscNet, the cooperative that provides high-speed internet to most of the state’s schools and libraries. WiscNet could shut down without UW support, forcing towns that are already struggling to deal the governor’s other budget cuts to get service through private companies.