Thursday, August 16, 2007

WI Ass'y Pubs: $877 Million In the Hole

Seems that the Radio Guys don't want to mention this, so we'll repeat.

The state 's non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau found the 2007-2009 budget proposal by Doyle, a Democrat, would leave a potential shortfall of $669 million that officials will have to deal with in the following two-year budget by raising taxes or cutting spending.

The budget passed by Senate Democrats will leave a shortfall of $728 million

Assembly Republicans would leave the largest such shortfall -- $877 million.

Yah, that's "fiscal responsibility."

The key word is "SPENDING."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dad,

I am not going to defend the level of government spending in Wisconsin - the state spends too much.

The Republicans do in fact have a structural deficit higher than the Senate or Doyle.

The difference is that the Republicans shrank the structural deficit from $1.2 billion to $870 billion, without raising taxes and without relying on fund-raids.

Yes. The structural deficit is bad, but it is not going to get fixed in one budget cycle.

I am not happy with that budget, but they did not fall into the temptation of evil and grow the structural deficit and add even more spending to avoid being called evil-children haters... or a-holes.

Dad29 said...

Anony, I think that we can begin cutting with the Legislature's "sum-sufficient" vice.

Then apply the same cuts to the Governor's "sum-sufficient" vice.

Same-o the Supreme Court.

Then let's act like real leaders and reduce Governor's, Legislators', and Cabinet members' incomes by 25%. (Or require a 25% cash-contribution to health premiums, or both.)

Then let's cut 10% of State employees across the board. Too bad, so sad. We cannot afford them any more. JB can be trained to check DNA samples himself, if necessary.

With the leadership example of the Leggies, we can then ask all UW system administrators to take a 10% hit, too.

See, leadership has both costs and benefits--if you think of the State's citizens first.

Anonymous said...

I agree with you Dad... I really do.