Charles Krauthammer: The Democrats' party of no

The magnificent turmoil gripping statehouses in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and soon others marks an epic political moment. The nation faces a fiscal crisis of historic proportions and, remarkably, our muddled, gridlocked, allegedly broken politics have yielded singular clarity.

At the federal level, President Obama's budget makes it clear that Democrats are determined to do nothing about the debt crisis, while House Republicans have announced that beyond their proposed cuts in discretionary spending, they will propose real entitlement reform. Simultaneously, Republican governors are taking on fiscally ruinous pension and health-care obligations, while Democrats are full-throated in support of the public-employee unions crying, "Hell, no."

A choice: Democrats desperately defending the status quo; Republicans charging the barricades.

Wisconsin is the epicenter. It began with economic issues. When Gov. Scott Walker proposed that state workers contribute more to their benefits, he started a revolution. Teachers called in sick. Schools closed. Demonstrators massed at the capitol. Democratic senators fled the state to paralyze the Legislature.

Unfortunately for them, that telegenic, faux-Cairo scene drew national attention to the dispute - and to the sweetheart deals the unions had negotiated. They were contributing a fifth of a penny on a dollar of wages to pensions, and one-fourth what private-sector workers pay for health insurance.

The unions understood that the more than 85 percent of Wisconsin not part of this special-interest group would not take kindly to "public servants" resisting adjustments that would leave them paying less for benefits than private-sector workers. They capitulated and claimed they were only protesting the other part of the bill, about collective bargaining rights.

Indeed. Walker understands that a onetime giveback means little. The state's financial straits - a $3.6 billion two-year shortfall - did not come out of nowhere. They came largely from a half-century power imbalance between the unions and the politicians.

In the private sector, the capitalist knows that when he negotiates with the union, if he gives away the store, he loses his shirt. In the public sector, the politicians have none of their own money at stake. On the contrary, the more favorably they dispose of union demands, the more likely they are to benefit from union largesse in the next election.

To redress these perverse incentives that benefit both negotiating parties at the expense of the taxpayer, Walker's bill would restrict future negotiations to wages. Excluded would be benefits, the more easily hidden sweeteners that come due long after the politicians who negotiated them are gone. The bill would also require that unions be recertified every year and that dues be voluntary.

Recognizing this threat to union power, the Democratic Party is pouring money and fury into the fight. Private unions have shrunk to less than 7 percent of the workforce. The Democrats' strength lies in government workers, who now constitute a majority of union members and provide massive support to the party. For them, Wisconsin represents a dangerous contagion.

Hence the current moment's blinding clarity. Here stand the Democrats, avatars of reactionary liberalism, desperately trying to hang on to the gains of their glory years - from unsustainable entitlements for the elderly, enacted when life expectancy was 62, to massive promissory notes issued to unions when state coffers were full and no one was looking.

Obama's Democrats have become the party of no. Real budget cuts? No. Entitlement reform? No. Tax reform? No. Breaking the corrupt, unsustainable symbiosis between public-sector unions and state governments? Hell, no.

We have heard everyone - from Obama's debt commission to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - call the looming debt a mortal threat to the nation. We have watched Greece self-immolate. The only question was: When will the country finally rouse itself?

Amazingly, the answer is: now. Led by famously progressive Wisconsin - Walker at the state level and Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan in Congress - a new generation of Republicans has looked at the debt and is crossing the Rubicon. Recklessly principled, they are putting the question to the nation: Are we a serious people?