If there is a smaller, more petty, more spiteful human being in Wisconsin than Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, I haven’t met him or her.
President Obama’s visit to the University of Wisconsin last month could prove costly.

The new Speaker of the State Assembly says UW’s decision to cancel classes for the President’s visit is something he will remember when they submit their budget request next year.

Rep. Robin Vos (R-Burlington) says his motivations aren’t political, but he warns that every decision the University of Wisconsin makes has an influence on its funding.

I love how on one hand Vos says he’ll remember the university’s decision to cancel classes for President Obama’s visit, while in the same breath saying his motivations aren’t political, because apparently he thinks people are too idiotic to make the connection.

The Democratic Party began to matter in Wisconsin when young activists decided in the 1940s to stop worrying about patronage and to start worrying about building a political movement. The first gubernatorial nominees of the modern Democratic Party were not longtime Democrats. After finishing third in four consecutive gubernatorial elections, the party nominated the former Socialist mayor of Milwaukee, Dan Hoan, to lead the ticket. He raised the party’s vote from 98,000 in 1942 to 536,000 in 1944. The party then nominated a former Progressive stalwart, Stoughton’s Carl Thompson, who got the Democrats within 100,000 votes of the Republicans in 1950. But Thompson still lost.

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Second, Wisconsin Democrats used to be not just proudly progressive and populist but also proudly at odds with national Democrats. Wisconsin Democrats spoke a language that was distinct to Wisconsin — in much the same way that the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party still speaks a language that is distinct to that state. Imagine what could have happened if, in 2014, Wisconsin Democrats had run a campaign that rejected the tone-deaf “messaging” of national Democratic strategists and presented their party as a maverick party with a distinct vision: aggressively critical of national Democrats who work with authoritarian Republicans on issues like trade policy and domestic surveillance; fiercely libertarian on issues such as legalization of marijuana; fiercely traditional when it comes to sustaining family farms, rural schools and small-town Wisconsin; proudly populist in its commitment to raising wages for working Wisconsinites (Scott Walker should have taken a hammering in debates and in ads on these issues).

Third, Wisconsin Democrats used to recognize that it took more than last-minute “mobilization” of voters to win elections. The Democratic Party that Gaylord Nelson and Pat Lucey forged was a permanent project that poured time and energy into building county parties and electing sheriffs and clerks. No election was too small, no corner of the state too remote. Elected officials thought of themselves as organizers. Nelson, who proudly noted that he never asked for a campaign contribution, expected to be outspent. Proxmire took on millionaire Republicans, like Walter Kohler, with barely enough money to pay for gas. Both men would have been aghast at the notion of trying to win an election merely by building up a war chest, going on television and “mobilizing” voters in safe Democratic wards.

Fourth, the Wisconsin Democratic Party at its strongest was both urban and rural. The breakthrough win for modern Democrats in legislative contests didn’t come in Madison or Milwaukee; it came in Crawford County in 1948, when Pat Lucey beat the Republican Assembly speaker and proved Democrats could compete statewide. Except for a few counties in the northwest and the southwest, Democrats lost the vast majority of rural Wisconsin in 2014. The party may be able to scrape by for a little longer in high-turnout presidential elections, but it will not make a comeback in statewide politics until it is again a truly statewide party.

Doctors seeing Medicare patients face a 24 percent cut in reimbursements beginning January 1. But almost no one has grasped that those cuts will hit Medicaid too—thanks to Obamacare. Unless Congress acts, we’re likely to see a huge exodus of doctors who will not accept either Medicare or Medicaid patients.

In 1997 Congress passed legislation, known as the “sustainable growth rate” (SGR), to try and reduce Medicare spending. If Medicare spending grew faster than a predetermined amount, doctors’ Medicare reimbursements would be cut the next year by enough to offset the overspending.

Not surprisingly, Medicare spending didn’t hit the target rate, and, again not surprisingly, Congress didn’t want doctors to take the financial hit. So Congress has passed legislation, known as the “Doc Fix,” multiple times to postpone the cuts and keep the reimbursement levels roughly the same.

But those postponed deficits keep piling up, and come January doctors will see, on average, a 24 percent cut in Medicare reimbursement levels. And here comes the double whammy: Medicaid reimbursements will face the same 24 percent cut.