It’s hard to get my head around the Democrats’ reasoning in supporting the Bucks arena deal.
On Wednesday state Senate Democrats bailed out majority Republicans by providing enough votes to approve a $250 million (more like $400 million when interest in calculated in) taxpayer grant to the Bucks. The team is owned by billionaire Wall Street hedge fund operators, who never disputed the argument that they could have afforded to pay for the whole $500 million cost of the project. They wanted taxpayer money because they wanted it, and that was that.
Moreover, the owners and the NBA used the tried-and-true political extortion technique of promising to move the team if the taxpayers didn’t cough up the money. Communities across the country have to stop caving to these strong-arm tactics. That’s a “big and bold” idea I could get behind, but I guess it won’t start here.
And along those lines, consider what the NBA was threatening. They were going to take the team to Seattle or Las Vegas. Both those cities are in much better shape than Milwaukee in most ways that count. They have less poverty, higher household incomes, higher home values, and they’re growing, while Milwaukee’s population is flat. In other words, you don’t need a professional basketball team to be successful as a community. The NBA’s arguments should have worked against them if anybody was thinking about it.
But the folks who really weren’t thinking about it were the Senate Democrats. Not only is this terrible public policy, it’s politics that borders on incompetence. Consider that majority Republicans did not bring the Democrats in when they cut $250 million from the UW budget or reduced state aid to many school districts or slashed the Stewardship Fund by a third. But when it comes to spending $250 million of the taxpayers’ money on a privately owned professional sports team, well, that’s just got to be a bipartisan, kumbaya moment. Seriously?
The Republicans had 15 votes out of their 19 members, so they needed two more to pass the bill in the 33-member Senate. The Democrats should have just said no. Let the GOP struggle to get to 17, and if they did, then run hard against every Republican who cast a vote for the deal. After all, a taxpayer giveaway to the Bucks is opposed by 80% of Wisconsinites.
And if they failed and the Bucks left? Well, blame the Republicans. That’s fair. They are in the majority. It’s their job to govern and to find the votes for their agenda within their own caucus.
What the Democrats can’t seem to understand is that the job of the minority party is very simple: It’s to stop being the minority.
