The economy continues to spiral and labor is facing both a tough financial and legislative climate. By the time we university students return from break, our state government will have changed from a liberal powerhouse into a few scattered Democrats incapable of doing anything more than tying down conservatives with picky legal minutiae.

Seeing themselves perhaps as tiny Lilliputians next to the behemoth of Scott Walker as Gulliver, lawmakers are hustling to push through favorable measures for pensions and contracts before they’re cut down to size in January. However, as is sometimes the case with liberal policy-makers, haste makes waste – literally.

The new contracts, in which public sector employees take a pay cut to even out the disparities with private sector employees, (which by nature I would favor ideologically) are poorly thought out. In fact, by trying to push them through at the last minute, labor will actually lose whatever ground they were looking to hold during the Walker administration.

What Democrats are most uncomfortable with is that public employees have been working without contracts for almost 18 months, and that although they have better benefits, they lag in salary behind those in the private sector.

To Democrats, the absence of worker security is unthinkable, and they’ve racked up $103 million to add to the budget to protect workers before the year closes. However, there is no ignoring the fact that, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, Wisconsin is looking at a possible $150 million deficit for this fiscal period and a $3.3 billion shortfall in the two-year stretch.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to make the current legislation uncomfortable enough to consider rethinking their expansive measures. Incumbent Democrats should step back and realize what these last-minute addendums would do to the already deep deficit. In this situation, “check yourself before you wreck yourself” should apply: labor should take time to gauge how they will fare under Walker before passing such huge legislature at the last minute.

At this point, making any large changes to the budget are not going to be a good idea, no matter how solid they are in principle.

Labor could probably do well under Walker if it runs out the clock on the Doyle administration; to make gains in the future budget, labor could flourish under Walker by playing to his strengths. If there’s one thing that Walker is it’s a human budget-planning spreadsheet, and ultimately, the measures that labor is proposing now would be in his best interest.

Workers are actually offering to take a pay cut to decrease the disparity between public and private employees, which is something Walker would positively salivate over. Labor does want to increase benefits for all workers in the long run, but after building a rapport with Walker, they might be able to pull it off.

Even now there are some Republicans in the Legislature who could warm to labor policies. Rep. Dean Kaufert, R-Neenah, has voted against employee contracts only once in his 20-year career and has said that if it doesn’t raise state costs, he could vote in favor of labor again. He is even quoted as saying, “From a salary standpoint, they’re taking some sacrifice…But I need to see what the language is.” In this emerging political situation, Republicans could see labor favorably, but they need time, something Democrats are unwilling to give.

For labor, the Walker administration is something they will have to weather after having had a receptive legislation for so long. More than anything, they needs to realize that the next four years are going to be a marathon. Right now, they’re trying to sprint, but they’ll exhaust themselves in Walker’s financially compartmentalized administration.

Labor can find their place in Wisconsin’s new Legislature, but it’s not in a last-ditch effort in an incumbent party that is already struggling financially.

Taylor Nye ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in anthropology and intending to major in Spanish.