Monday, May 18, 2009

Doing The Math

Scott Walker is going to force my coworkers and I to take a furlough of five hours a week. He says it's because there is a deficit, meaning that the county is spending more money that it is taking in.

But, the county gets reimbursed for the work I do, at about four times the rate that they pay me. The case management I provide to my clients is billed to Medicare, so the County gains it's money from both the state and the federal governments. If Walker intends to do this furlough for the rest of the year, the county will lose over $9,000 that I could've brought in by myself. Now multiply that by all the social workers.

Child support enforcement workers bring in more money than they cost. And if you thought the child daycare fraud was bad, how is it going to be when there is less time and thus less work put into recouping the fraudulently paid money?

This also doesn't take into account the potential fines that the County faces if things go wrong or some people don't meet state and federal regulations.

Using Walker's logic, this would be the scenario in Chez Capper: Facing an impending loss of income due to the furloughs, my wife and I look at our budget. We decide to cut spending by not going up north as much, but still have to pay the taxes, the utilities and for the propane to heat the place. Then my wife quits her job. Obviously, we would be losing more income than we are saving in spending, and run the risk of running into serious problems both financially and by neglecting the place up north.

The more I look at this, the more it seems like a political stunt to me, rather than any type of serious effort to fix an alleged budget deficit.

4 comments:

  1. I couldn't agree more. It's just like in Racine County where the CE forced a pay freeze with the threat of layoffs. But...you know...it plays right into the hands of those who really do despise government (union) workers.

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  2. "The more I look at this, the more it seems like a political stunt to me, rather than any type of serious effort to fix an alleged budget deficit."
    Kind of like Doyle? (actually, I do believe it is a stunt by Doyle)

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  3. How is something that Walker is doing a "stunt" by the Governor? You're taking the name of this blog to heart, my friend.

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  4. Jason, no he isn't, at least not all of it. He is totally missing the cognitive part. ;)

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