The budget voted on by the Joint Finance Committee will be received by the Assembly tomorrow. Considering the vast majority of votes taken on the Finance Committee were party-line, with all 12 Democrats generally supporting the budget, it seems unlikely that the budget won’t eventually be guided to passage. In fact, the Wispolitics Budget Blog noted that one Democrat, Rep. Bob Ziegelbauer, has come out against the budget, but what they didn’t mention is that Ziegelbauer is barely a Democrat in the first place, so his “defection” on this issue isn’t worth any worries.
In case you don’t remember, the last budget took a little longer than a few days to pass. But then the legislature was split, with a Democratic senate and a Republican assembly.
What aspect of the bill will the Republicans go after? Tax hikes, the battle cry of the GOP, will certainly be included in the arsenal, and who knows, maybe the early release program will gain some traction. I assume what the Democrats will do is discuss the budget not as “the budget” but rather as “the budget cuts.” If they frame themselves as the cost-cutters, and the GOP blocks, the pressure will be on the opposition to explain why they’re preventing huge budget fixes from taking place, and they will be expected to come up with alternative budget cut proposals.
What stuns me is that Mark Pocan expects the process to be so quick. He said he expects about two days of floor session, as Republicans attempt “to make a circus out of it.” Apparently the GOP has come up with as many as 700 amendments! That only takes 48 hours? After the budget passes we’ll have to do a tally here to see how much spending is tacked on during the process, by party of course. Maybe for shits and giggles we could do it by region as well.
