Sunday, October 14, 2007

Oink

Doyle is porking up his budget to try to pick off a few Republican votes for his new budget.

Bids for GOP votes help explain the following provisions in the revised budget the Democratic governor is giving the Legislature, as he tries to break a 106-day impasse over the budget that was to start July 1:

• $7 million for the reopened paper mill in Park Falls, the largest community in the district of Republican Rep. Mary Williams of Medford.

• A $4 million soybean crusher in the district of Republican Rep. Brett Davis of Oregon, who holds a seat long coveted by Democrats.

• A new Juneau County Circuit Court judgeship that Republican Rep. Sheryl Albers of Reedsburg has been fighting to have authorized for years.

• Full funding of a 2005 law that would waive university and college tuition for veterans - a law that Republican Rep. Terry Musser of Black River Falls, chairman of the Assembly Veterans Committee, helped pass.

• Biofuels funding, which is a top priority of Republican Rep. Jeff Wood of Chippewa Falls.

With favors like that, Doyle is “hoping and expecting to pick off enough” Republicans, who control the Assembly 52-47, said Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch (R-West Salem).

This kind of stuff happens all the time, but it usually isn’t quite so brazen. 

Just think of it… the taxpayers in the entire state may be punished with a budget that jacks up taxes by almost a BILLION dollars so that Jeff Wood’s district will get some taxpayer cash for biofuels funding.  Or the taxpayers may have to pay for a new Circuit Court Judge in Juneau County NOT because the new position has been justified, but so that Doyle can buy Albers’ vote. 

Hopefully the Republicans who Doyle is targeting won’t be so stupid as to abandon the taxpayers and their party for a piece of pork - especially since everyone will know that their vote was purchased for that pork.

(11) Comments
Posted by Owen at 1346 hrs
Politics + Politics - Wisconsin

  1. Paying veterans’ tuition is not pork.  The state wanted it, the state mandated, the state ought to pay it—not students and parents continuing to pay increased tuition, as we have for a couple of years, to cover costs of so many students paying nothing, much as they earned it with blood, sweat, and tears. 

    (What was Musser’s plan to pay for it?  Anyone recall?)

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on October 14, 2007 at 1720 hrs


  2. Governor Jim Doyle is using taxpayer dollars and to buy votes????  Hes so good at it ya hardly notice anymore.  Spoze hes gotta keep those skills sharp for the next election.  I also spoze that Wis Democracy Campaign will be ALL OVER this stuff.  Ya, uhuh.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on October 14, 2007 at 1745 hrs


  3. Sigh. 

    And what of all the people being hurt by the Republicans and the no-tax lemmings that are holding up the budget?  Are they expendable, just so some people can save a couple of bucks now, which by the way will cost them exponentially more later?

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on October 14, 2007 at 1745 hrs


  4. “This kind of stuff happens all the time, but it usually isn’t quite so brazen.”

    Owen you can’t really serious??

    Thats worse than you ripping Doyle for creating new sentances and Paragraphs in the budget. After Tommy actually created new words by using his frankenstein VETO.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on October 14, 2007 at 1844 hrs


  5. Owen, brazen vote buying.

    These things were in the Assembly version of the budget.

    Isn’t it compromise?

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on October 14, 2007 at 2009 hrs


  6. Those items shouldn’t have been in the Assembly version of the budget, either.

    However, at least in the GOP version, they didn’t accompany a $1b tax increase.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on October 14, 2007 at 2014 hrs


  7. Publius, if items such as tuition for veterans shouldn’t be in the bduget—then we can presume that you were against it when the legislature passed it without funding it?  Then you would agree that their approval that if it won’t be funded, it ought to be repealed?  That must be what the Assembly means by not including it in the budget.

    How about the rest of you?  Tuition for veterans is “pork,” so you don’t want to pay for it and agree it ought to be repealed?

    (I’m actually for it—but for everyone paying for it, rather than only some of us already having to pay tuition increases for others, too.  Or maybe a surcharge on every flag lapel pin and yellow-ribbon magnet sold in the state instead of the tuition surcharge that may be coming for the rest of the students, if this isn’t paid by every patriot across the state in their taxes.)

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on October 14, 2007 at 2253 hrs


  8. No, the state should not have had the tuition remission for veterans.  As the Recess Supervisor has pointed out - soon, there won’t be anyone left who pays tuition, or at least, only rich white kids will be left paying.

    Do I think the program is pork as traditionally understood?  No, it isn’t.  The soybean crusher?  Yes, that is pork.  But the vets remission was a program designed to ingratiate Terry Musser with vets. 

    However, the UW is largely to blame for this; they interpreted the original legislation to include MA/MBA/JD programs while the intent was to provide a finite number of “college” credits.  Once word spread that the state was covering the “expanded” program, the legislature was on the hook to pay for it.

    Hence, the GOP then turned the issue back at the UW and told them that they had to fund it since they were the ones antagonizing the issue all Spring. 

    God knows there is plenty of waste within the UW to fully fund this program if it was a priority for them.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on October 14, 2007 at 2336 hrs


  9. No, the problem is that the bill’s authors didn’t deal with existing state law they already created that requires that some percentage of instructional costs for every student be covered by tuition. 

    Keep in mind that this could include more students at tech colleges than at the UW—the fall enrollment numbers still coming in—and that has nothing to do with grad school, law school, or any other reason for you to attack the UW.

    And if this budget item doesn’t go through, keep in mind that the estimated total cost of about $50 million to state schools may hit students and parents there this year—but they’ll figure out a way for it to hit taxpayers . . . and at the county level for tech colleges, too.

    Now, as for what God knows, He hasn’t talked to me lately about the UW—so what did He tell you, so you know just where to cut?  Surely, in His infinite wisdom, He would not have been like those unwise humans who attack others of His creation in such vague terms.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on October 15, 2007 at 0021 hrs


  10. No, the soyben grant is not “pork.”  That’s the kind of fooolishness that you get when you only focus on budget inputs.  That $4million state grant serves as the rainmaker for drawing $40 million in private investment to Rock County and a facility with 45 new full-time jobs.

    These item were already in one form of the budget or the other and just show that the governor is willing to work with the AssGOP even though they haven’t shown much willingness to work with anyone else.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on October 15, 2007 at 0455 hrs


  11. Speaking of the RS…

    What’s his take on Albers being on that list?

    Posted by Kevin Binversie on October 15, 2007 at 0924 hrs


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