Senate Republicans do not even bother trying to defend the special-interest giveaways in their behind-closed-doors budget.
Things that get bought in the night
By
Senator Judy Robson
Senate Republicans sat silently through most of the floor session on the state budget, which lasted nearly 17 hours. They did little to defend or justify their budget. They refused to engage in any sort of debate.
I asked individual Republican senators how they would respond to their school administrators who will have to further increase class sizes, increase student fees, reduce class offerings, and eliminate teachers. The senators had no answers. Most of them were absent from their seats when I read e-mails I received from their own school administrators.
They could not justify putting special interests first and children last.
The Republican budget spends $38 million on a highway engineering study in Milwaukee that the city doesn’t want, and which will be obsolete by the time the work begins in 12 years.
Their budget gives $1 million a year in grants so trucking companies can install heating and air conditioning units in trucks. Their budget gives $4 million a year to people healthy and wealthy enough to open up a tax shelter known as a “health savings account.” And it gives a $4.2 million tax break to temporary employment agencies.
The Republican budget gives waste haulers a 25 percent cut on landfill fees that go into the recycling fund, a $6 million a year tax break. Their budget cuts the utility tax for railroads, and gives cigarette wholesalers a new tax deduction.
The Republican provision would force the Stewardship Fund to purchase land already owned by the state under the Board of Public Lands. This brilliant maneuver reduces the bonding available for other land conservation purchases and increases state debt.
Republicans tripled the Medicaid co-pay for generic drugs, which puts the co-pay at the same level as brand-name drugs. This removes the incentive for Medicaid patients to get the lower-cost generic drug, increasing the costs of the Medicaid program. While Democrats are working to help people get affordable prescription drugs, the Republicans are fattening the profits of drug companies.
Special interests lined up for their piece of the budget pie, and they got it. The only people this budget fails to help out are schoolchildren and property tax payers.
By the time Republicans got around to funding schools, there was not enough money left to comply with current law that requires annual inflationary increases in state funding of schools. So Republicans changed the law and slashed by more than half the required annual increase, taking the per-pupil increase back to what the level would have been in 1980.
The budget passed three key hurdles – the Joint Finance Committee, Assembly, and Senate – in the wee hours of the morning after all-night sessions. This is no way to govern. Most of Wisconsin was sleeping. Legislators were sleep-deprived. Secretive deals were cut and sealed in the dead of the night.
Senate Republicans crafted a huge 11th hour amendment to secure the votes of wavering senators, including Senator Tom Reynolds and Senator Mary Lazich. Democrats did not see this amendment until 3 a.m., which was 14 ½ hours after the Senate convened to take up the budget.
The long-awaited mystery amendment created a new $15 million tax break for people who home school their children or send them to private school – people just like Senator Tom Reynolds. This amendment received no public hearing and no public scrutiny. Had there been a public hearing, we would have learned that home-schooling parents do not even want the tax credit designed just for them.
The mystery amendment also helped out the Wal-Marts of Wisconsin. The amendment deleted a budget provision that would have reduced the “bonus” large retailers receive from the Department of Revenue when they file their sales tax collections on time. Reducing Wal-Mart’s bonus from 0.5 percent to 0.2 percent of their sales tax collections was too much for Senate Republicans to stomach.
Twice I moved for adjournment so that legislators could get some rest and have time to examine the amendment in the light of day. The state budget is the single most important bill the Legislature passes. Sleep-deprived people cannot make the kinds of judgments that are required when we are setting the state’s taxing and spending priorities.
Republicans rejected my motions. Then they sat silently, for the most part, during the entire budget debate. They seldom rose to defend the budget. They did not explain why they prioritized special interests over children. They knew they didn’t have to speak. They had the votes to pass the budget. They just wanted to pass their budget and let someone else clean up the mess.
July 17, 2005
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Judy Robson lives in Beloit and represents most of Rock County and the northwest portion of Walworth County in the Wisconsin Senate's 15th district.
