The state Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee Co-Chairmen Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, and Rep. Dean Kaufert, R-Neenah, announced Wednesday at a hearing in Watertown that the committee will build a new budget from the “ground up” instead of voting on Gov. Jim Doyle’s proposed biennial budget.
“The proposal introduced by Gov. Doyle is not merely bad budgeting but a dangerous direction for the state of Wisconsin,” Kaufert said in his opening speech at the hearing. “This budget needs a drastically better starting point … it is my job to put the state in the best position to succeed.”
Under the governor’s proposed budget, the state will not reduce the current $1.6 billion budget deficit and will even increase Wisconsin’s debt to $1.8 billion in the next biennium, according to Kaufert.
The Legislative Fiscal Bureau reported Wednesday Doyle’s budget proposal includes an increase in taxes and fees by $368 million, leading critics to dispute Doyle’s promise to balance the budget without raising taxes.
Fitzgerald spokesman Mike Prentiss said Doyle has proposed increasing state spending by $1 billion and is paying for it by “raiding” money from specific funds, including the Transportation Fund and the Patients Compensation Fund.
“[Doyle] is not only taking money and using it for another purpose, he is putting it on a credit card that we’ve already overdrawn,” Prentiss said. “Taxpayers are going to be paying this down for the next 20 years.”
While the committee plans on using Doyle’s budget proposal as a starting point, the bulk of the budget will be proposed from scratch. Prentiss said much of the work it will do will concern deciding whether to maintain, increase or cut funding for state programs.
“The governor chose to stick his head in the sand and avoid the tough decisions … but the committee is preparing to do this right,” Prentiss said.
Fitzgerald and Kaufert say there will be a serious reconstruction of the budget, but the specifics of their new budget proposal have not yet been determined.
When asked whether cuts would be made to education or to the university, Prentiss said it is too soon to confirm any modifications.
“It’s too early to speculate on specific changes in any particular program,” he said.
Despite the Republican criticism of his proposed budget, Doyle has promised to restore fiscal discipline by balancing the state budget without raising taxes.
“Wisconsin is on the move … creating jobs, growing the economy, returning fiscal sanity to state government, embracing new education and health initiatives … while standing firm against raising taxes,” Doyle said in his January budget address to the state.
The Joint Finance Committee will be holding four more budget hearings across the state to further deliberate on the governor’s budget. It will also listen to a series of briefings from various agency heads to hear funding pleas.
The committee members will evaluate the briefings in preparation of an April vote on the budget.
