By The Associated Press

Kenosha News. November 26, 2023.

Editorial: Compromise to govern

It’s like a long-playing record that gets stuck in a groove and keeps repeating. And repeating.

And it’s not one of our favorite hits.

It happened again this month when Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a $2 billion Republican tax cut bill — as he had warned he would.

The veto came after Republicans dumped Evers’ $1 billion proposal for child-care funding, UW System support and workforce development and replaced it with their own plan that proposed reducing the state income tax rate from 5.3% to 4.4% for people in the state’s third tax bracket, a broad category covering individuals earning between $27,630 and $304,000.

The GOP plan also proposed tax credits of up to $5,200 for families of four to offset childcare costs.

As usual, the uncompromising clash between the governor and state Republicans came with the required finger-pointing.

Evers said the GOP plan failed to “meaningfully and sensibly address the workforce challenges that have plagued Wisconsin for a decade.”

The governor said, “Clearly, Republicans have yet to wrap their heads around our state’s challenges and their inability to take this issue seriously is affecting Wisconsinites’ livelihoods, our workforce and our economy, and our kids’ futures. With each continued day of delay and inaction, Wisconsin families, employers and communities — especially in our rural areas — pay the price.”

Republican Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu responded saying the GOP bill Evers’ vetoed “would have provided meaningful relief for Wisconsin families to address inflation and rising child care costs.”

With the uncompromising clash, Evers got nothing, the GOP-controlled Legislature got nothing — and worst of all the people of Wisconsin got nothing and the lawmakers headed out for the holidays and will not return in session until mid-January.

We would hope that sometime over the holidays, Evers and the GOP leadership would re-examine how this broken record accomplishes nothing and return refreshed with a plan to seek compromises — big and small — to more effectively govern the state.

A good place to start would be with a compromise on the proposed $200 million new engineering building on the UW-Madison campus which would boost the number of engineering graduates. That has support around the state from 40 business leaders who have urged the project in newspaper ads.

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has said Republicans “would love to be able to find a way to get to yes” to approve the engineering building funding, but in the next breath repeated concerns over the UW’s diversity, equity and inclusion programming, which the GOP wants to curb or jettison.

Find a way to say yes. Compromise. Get the ball rolling and do what’s best for Wisconsin.

Hopefully, one successful compromise would lead to another — and another — and the state would get out of the tiresome track of legislate and veto, legislate and veto.