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Governor abuses line-item vetoes

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by Mike Hahn

Thursday, February 8, 2007

They call it the Frankenstein veto. Just as Dr. Frankenstein used carefully selected bits of human flesh to create a monster that terrorized innocent and unsuspecting townspeople, so too can the governor of Wisconsin use his or her veto pen to carefully carve selected words, letters and numbers to spend money never approved by any elected representative.

For decades, it has been a power that the governor of Wisconsin has had at his disposal to do just about anything he wants to a bill that crosses his desk. Now there is an effort underway in the state Legislature to put an end to this enormous exploitation of power. I cannot say that this is a new idea — the Democrats tried to take the line-item veto away from Gov. Thompson all the time — but this latest push is all the result of a "partial" veto Doyle made in the 2005-07 budget.

Wielding his veto pen more like a scalpel than a tool of constitutional checks and balances, Doyle managed to appropriate $427 million from the transportation fund and move it to the general fund in an effort to increase spending. The problem is that he removed hundreds of words — more than two full pages of the budget — and left a mere 20 to make the transfer. And we're not talking 20 consecutive words, either. The words Doyle left in place were taken out of context and strung together in such a way that one has to wonder how much time and effort it took to find the right combination.

The truly disturbing part of the whole Frankenstein veto is how Doyle arrived at the $427 million figure. To get the right blend of numbers to rob the transportation fund, he took the nine necessary numbers — 427,000,000 — from five different figures within the original budget. The two and seven were taken from the budget year — 2005-07 — and the first two zeros were taken from statute numbers and subsections — for the record they were statute sections 20.395 and 85.026.

So there you have it. That is the basic, short-story version of how our governor robbed one department to pay another. If you think that it sounds bad the way I just explained, Google "anatomy of a line-item veto" and you get to see what it actually looks like, as Doyle was creating new phrases and numbers out of thin air.

To anyone who is even a casual observer of Wisconsin politics, this is obviously a gross abuse of executive power and to use the word "crooked" to describe Doyle's actions is certainly not out of line. After all, the money he transferred was never voted on or approved by any of our assemblymen or senators.

The Frankenstein veto gets its power directly from the state Constitution. In order to take this power away, a constitutional amendment must be approved in a statewide referendum — we all know the drill after last November — and the Assembly has already taken steps to do so by a vote of 70-25. Even some of the most liberal members of the Legislature, like Madison's own Spencer Black, voted to take away the governor's ability to construct new words and figures that did not exist before.

Unfortunately, Senate Majority Leader Judy Robson, D-Beloit, has no intention of bringing the Assembly Joint Resolution to the floor anytime soon. No, Sen. Robson is defending Doyle's use of the veto and accusing the Republicans of playing politics, despite the fact that 18 members of her own party voted for it in the Assembly, and that two of her fellow Democrats are co-sponsors of the Senate version. Those 20 Democrats understand that this is not about partisanship; why is it so hard for Robson?

This really is not about which party is in power. It's about too much power in the hands of one person. As of right now, Doyle is the one with the power, and maybe if he had not acted with such blatant arrogance we would not even be talking about this. The fact is, he did. Doyle showed the entire state what one person could do with a little imagination and virtually unlimited veto power.

Regardless of who is in office, this power runs counter to our principles of representative democracy. Whatever Doyle's intentions were and no matter if he thought he was right or not, we can no longer continue to allow one person to circumvent our laws.

The budget is not the governor's own private account. It is the people's money and must be protected against those who, like Doyle, would rather treat it as an ATM for their own purposes.

Mike Hahn (mhahn@badgerherald.com) is a senior majoring in history and political science.

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Anonymous (February 8, 2007 @ 7:40am):

The President abuses signing statements, so what's your point?

Anonymous (February 8, 2007 @ 1:58pm):

Hey genius, moving funds from one account to another doesn't increase spending. And those $427 million were moved in order to help fund public schools, which the Republicans wanted to leave without even basic resources.

Next time, you might want to at least try to give a balanced perspective instead of the Republican talking points.

Anonymous (February 9, 2007 @ 7:24pm):

The point being Mr. Not A Genius is that by taking the spending from the DOT, or anywhere else for that matter, is now you have to increase spending to fund the depleted projects. Unless of course you have a political agenda that, let's just say for argument, would be a quid pro cuo (that would be a payback for all you "genius'") with one of your major campaign donors. I can't wait to see the next budget to see what Indian gaming gets, oh wait he did that one already. I guess we can only wonder who is next on the list. Perhaps the members of the old election board?

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