The Wisconsin State Senate passed the $62 billion biennial budget by a close 17-16 vote Wednesday night.
After working through the Senate Republican’s 32 proposed amendments, only one made it into the Democrat’s budget package, which only made simple changes to the language of another amendment.
After tabling the other 31 amendments, Sen. Jim Sullivan, D-Wauwatosa, joined the 15 Senate Republicans in voting against the budget while the remaining 17 Democrats voted for and passed the budget.
According to Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston, the budget protects working families, schools, and police and fire services while making critical investments and “squeezing every nickel out of every dollar,” as said in a statement.
However, the Republicans are not as supportive of the budget, which they see as hindering than helping.
“The budget overall increases taxes and spending, which is the wrong direction our state should be going in,” said Kimberly Liedl, spokesperson for Senate Minority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau. “With high unemployment, we need to be focusing on creating jobs and decreasing the tax burden on working families.”
One of the major changes the Democratic senators made to the budget in order to overcome the current $6.6 billion budget deficit was the deletion of the oil company profits tax and the elimination of exclusions to capital gains taxes.
The oil company profits tax was included by Gov. Jim Doyle as a way to tax oil companies without passing the burden onto consumers in order to fund transportation projects, including roads. The Assembly changed the tax so that the $260 million burden could be passed onto consumers in the form of a 4.4 cent increase at the pump.
In order to prevent an increase at the pump, the Senate deleted the oil tax and voted to transfer $260 million into a transportation fund in order to pay for the new roads and other projects the oil tax was intended to fund.
Instead of relying on revenue brought in by the oil tax, the Senate raised the capital gains tax on property sellers and investors, except for those selling farm land and other assets, generating an additional $315 million in revenue for the biennium and a total $486 million overall.
While the Democrats see this change as a smart solution to overcome the current budget deficit, the Republicans see it as a move in the wrong direction.
“By eliminating the exclusions, it’s going to make it more difficult for business in the state and people selling assets…it’s going to make state less friendly to businesses,” Liedl said.
Other changes made to the budget by the Senate include eliminating the provision which requires the Department of Justice to issue drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants, mandating liability insurance for all drivers, increasing the minimum wage every year on Sept. 1 and providing University of Wisconsin research assistants with collective bargaining rights.
The Senate and Assembly’s proposed budgets must now be reconciled through a special committee of lawmakers, then passed on to Doyle who will either sign the budget as is or use his veto power to make further revisions.
The legislators are attempting to have it finalized before July 1, the deadline set by the federal government with additional transportation funding as an incentive should the deadline be met.
