Plasma TVs are new "Welfare Cadillacs"

You won't be seeing a plasma television set in any state building anytime soon.

Plasma TVs have become a symbol of extravagance to public officials -- and perhaps the public -- in Wisconsin.

If you doubt that, consider the avalanche of criticism over the plans of WisconsinEye -- the state's answer to C-Span -- to install a plasma TV in the offices of all 33 State Senators. (I don't know what they were going to do for the Assembly; no one there has piled on yet.)

State Sen. Cathy Stepp, a Racine Republican who's in a targeted seat next year started things rolling with a press release and letter to State Sen. Dale Schultz, GOP majority leader, declaring that, "I will not, under any circumstances, allow a plasma television to be installed in my office." That was good for a pretty big hometown news story.

Schultz quickly said that Senate offices will not get plasma TVs . "There are not going to be monitors in our offices," Schultz told Republican senators before they went into a closed-door session to resume work on the proposed state budget, the Journal Sentinel's political blog reported.

Gov. Jim Doyle jumped in, too, using it as a launching pad to attack the Republican state budget: "What a cruel irony that on the same day that the Senate is preparing to adopt a budget that would cut education by $400 million, they are considering giving themselves 33 plasma TVs. If the Senate goes through with this, it just shows how seriously out of step they are with average Wisconsin families.

"I agree with Republican Senator Cathy Stepp, who blew the whistle on this contract: most Wisconsin citizens can't afford plasma screen TVs for their own home - and there is no reason we need to give them to Senators. Instead of focusing on how they can get plasma TVs for themselves, Senators should be focused on passing a budget that protects education and freezes property taxes," Doyle said.

WisconsinEye, for the record, is a non-profit organization which has been raising money and negotiating for five years in hopes of beginning its live coverage of the legislature. The plasma TVs would not have been paid for by the taxpayers. But no matter; that is totally irrelevant in the heat of the moment.

So, you may wonder -- especially if you don't live in southeastern Wisconsin -- how did plasma TVs become the symbol of excess in government?

The Muskego-Norway School Board gets the credit, or blame.

After a building project supported by a 2001 taxpayer referendum was completed, some money was left for furnishings and equipment, and one of the things it went for was to buy eight 42-inch plasma TVs for the Muskego High School cafeteria at a cost of $51,000.

When they were installed in March, some taxpayer eyebrows were raised, and complaints were made to the school board and to talk radio, where it became a cause celebre.

After the uproar subsided, the school district decided to keep the TVs, since they could be sold only for a fraction of what they cost. But school officials took steps to assure taxpayers nothing like that could ever happen again. Journal Sentinel story.

So, when word surfaced of the plan to put plasma TVs in State Senate offices surfaced, the officeholders freaked. Not coincidentally, Stepp's district includes Muskego.

In days of old, conservatives loved to complain about "welfare Cadillacs" driven by people on the dole, or tell stories about the woman in the checkout line with a cartful of T-bones, paid for with food stamps.

If only we hadn't "ended welfare as we know it," the neocons could rail against the welfare recipients with plasma TVs. Instead, they're having to turn their attention to government spending -- and sometimes that hits a little too close to home.