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July 01, 2009

The Wednesday Update

July 1, 2009  Volume 3, Number 25   IN THIS ISSUE:  Top Secret Tax Squad; Capitol Pork Producers

July 1, 2009 Vol 3, Number 25	Wednesday Update
In This Issue:   1. Top Secret Tax Squad 2. Capitol Pork Producers 3. Spare the Veto 4. Climate Change Hooey	Top Secret Tax Squad       For months, Governor Doyle and Democratic leaders have told us how difficult it has been to develop a budget that wipes out a $6.6 billion deficit.  In reality, Governor Doyle and the legislature never broke a sweat.  Instead, they kicked the can down the road, raising taxes and fees by over $2 billion, while still leaving a $2.3 billion budget deficit in the next biennium.     Former Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch provides this outstanding analysis of the clandestine budget process and the final product which passed the legislature late last week: Historic Tax and Fee Hike Centerpiece of Democrats’ Budget Deal By State Representative Mike Huebsch Governor Doyle and Democrat lawmakers finally got out of their own way and reached a budget agreement yesterday.  Senate Democrats approved the spending plan shortly after 12:00 a.m. and the Assembly is expected to vote some time tonight.  Governor Doyle has promised to sign it into law early next week.     While the political maneuvering in Madison may be drawing to a close, the assault on taxpayers has just begun.  With no concern for what middle class families can afford, Democrats chose more taxes and more government spending as their answer to the economic downturn.   Democrats will undoubtedly take a victory lap for fulfilling their pledge to complete the budget before the end of the fiscal year on June 30.  But we all know from our school days that substandard work earns an "F" even when it's turned in on time.  All the Democrats have done is trade quality for expediency.   In the months after the final votes are tallied and the Democrats’ proposals become reality, every Wisconsin family will be able to calculate their own personal and devastating price tag.  The price for their misplaced priorities is just too high. During the last four months, Democrats set new standards for taxing and spending and gave new meaning to the phrase backroom deal.  They approved the largest state and local tax and fee increase in state history - $4.9 billion - and spent 6.8 percent more tax dollars than two years ago.  They hammered out the defining details of their spending plan in secret meetings, informed Republicans of their progress through the media and rejected our amendments out of hand.  Assembly and Senate Democrats budget work came in fits and starts as they canceled Joint Finance Committee meetings to settle disputes out of the public eye.  Democrats who hold 12 of 16 seats on the budget-writing committee unanimously approved the budget after an all-night session on May 29.  But in the weeks that followed, each house rewrote portions of the budget and passed competing plans.   Then, top Doyle aids and Democrat leaders met secretly for seven days to iron out the differences.  But when media criticism over the secrecy reached fever pitch, they convened a conference committee that can best be described as charade.  As the Associated Press reported: “Democrats refused to allow Republicans to propose any changes to the state budget during the hastily called first meeting Wednesday of a bipartisan committee created to work out a deal… “For much of Wednesday's 2 1/2 hour meeting, Assembly Speaker Mike Sheridan, D-Janesville, merely read the titles of individual budget items with little comment or questions.” While finger pointing is all too common in politics, it reached absurd proportions this week when the Assembly Speaker blamed Republicans for standing in the way of a budget deal.  In truth, competing Democrat priorities have caused the hold up.  For example, Assembly Democrats want to give illegal aliens “driver cards” and subsidized tuition, but Senate Democrats do not; Senate Democrats want to eliminate Wisconsin’s capital gains tax exclusion, but Assembly Democrats do not.     While I cannot stand in the way of this budget deal, let me be clear: I would if I could.  I would stand in the way for as long as it took to stop the Democrats’ unprecedented tax and fee hikes and prevent policy initiatives that are out of step with Wisconsin values. But, with Democrats in complete control of state government for the first time in 25 years, my Republican colleagues and I have been forced to watch this proverbial train wreck from the sidelines.  Democrat leaders have excluded us from negotiations and limited our ability to review their proposals before forcing us to vote.  They have paid lip service to bipartisanship and reduced public input and scrutiny to a meaningless formality.     Governor Doyle and the Democrats sacrificed open government and sincere debate in order to limit scrutiny of historic tax and fee hikes, record spending levels, unprecedented bonding, indefensible earmarks and controversial policy proposals completely unrelated to state finances.  The institution of the legislature will recover from the Democrats’ arrogant and destructive decisions, but taxpayers and our economy will suffer for the foreseeable future.     Key Details of “the Deal” Spending over Two Years: $62 billion, a 6.8% increase.  New State Tax and Fee Hikes: $2.1 billion, in addition to $1.2 billion approved in February’s “budget adjustment bill.”  Local Property Tax Hikes: $309 per median-valued home and $1.5 billion statewide.  Capital Gaines Tax Exclusion Cut in Half. Reduced the income tax exclusion for investment gains from 60% to 30%, costing investors about $242 million.  QEO Immediately Repealed  Oil Franchise Fee Abandoned: Revenues are replaced with bonding and a transfer from the petroleum inspection fund.    Requires Auto Insurance and Increases Mandatory Minimum  Rejected Governor Doyle’s Proposed Changes to Wisconsin’s Joint and Several Liability Laws  Provides Subsidized Tuition for Certain Illegal Aliens at UW Schools  Eliminates Plan to Provide Driver Cards to Illegal Aliens  Scraps Plan to Index the Minimum Wage  Establishes Primary Enforcement of Wisconsin’s Mandatory Seatbelt Law  Restores Funding to the Department of Justice  Rejects the Assembly Democrats’ Plan to Reduce the Number of Low-Income Children Allowed in the Milwaukee School Choice Program  Prohibits Counties Funding Construction Projects with Private Dollars      Capitol Pork Producers  One of the most common themes coming from Democratic leaders is how hard they’ve worked to balance the state's books.  Yet with seemingly no effort at all, these shameless self-promoters managed to pack the budget with policy initiatives and pork barrel projects that have absolutely nothing to do with state finances. Wisconsin Club for Growth has highlighted many of the policy items that were slipped into the budget without public debate or media scrutiny.  These items include requiring citizens to purchase additional automobile insurance coverage, mandating primary seatbelt enforcement, giving chiropractors a competitive advantage over doctors and removing caps on teacher salaries. These are just a few of the policies that survived the budget process. For the first time during his tenure as Governor, Jim Doyle decided to use his veto pen sparingly. Apparently Doyle is only interested in using his veto to raid segregated funds and to remove spending controls that help keep local property taxes down. Doyle had no problem allowing legislative Democrats to take home more than $37 million in pork projects.          Spare the Veto Spoil the Economy      Monday Governor Doyle announced 81 vetoes to the budget that had passed just two days earlier.  Using his veto, Doyle eliminated a paltry $10 million in spending. In other words the Governor used his powerful veto pen to trim exactly .0362% from the Legislature's budget. A budget which increased spending by 6.6% as the state was facing a $6.6 billion deficit.   Doyle gave some interesting reasons for his vetoes.  With regard to designating Milwaukee’s Shepherd Express as the state’s newspaper of record, Doyle said: “I am vetoing this provision because it should be subject to the full legislative process where the merits of the provision can be fully and openly debated.”  Curiously, Doyle didn't object to EVERY OTHER PROVISION in the budget which was crafted in secret and passed with absolutely no public scrutiny. Doyle trimmed only a handful of pork projects stuffed into the bill to buy last minute votes.  Yet he vetoed $171,000 to the Marquette Dental School, because he said: "...current economic and fiscal conditions require that all agencies must absorb reductions in their budgets." Apparently fiscal conditions favor spending $500,000 to renovate the Oshkosh Opera House, and another $500,000 to build a climate change laboratory near Madison.  It’s reassuring to know our Governor has his priorities straight.   Climate Change Hooey       It appears that the climate change cabal in Washington may have overplayed their hand.  Kimberly Strassel explains in the Wall Street Journal:   Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.  The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)