Minor Thoughts from me to you

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle said today he would call the state Legislature into special session to consider a compromise budget bill.

The Legislature is 100 days late in passing a new, two-year budget, and Wisconsin is the only state without a taxing and spending plan. Without a budget, the state continues at last year's taxing and spending levels.

Leaders of the Republican-led Assembly and the Democratic-led Senate have met in private with Doyle aides for more than two weeks but have not reached a compromise. The closed-door talks began at Doyle's insistence after a larger group of negotiators had previously made no progress in resolving differences between the two chamber's budget proposals.

The compromise bill Doyle said he would introduce for the special session is still being drafted. But he said it would include the full cigarette tax increase, a $418 million tax on hospitals and $430 million in spending cuts compared to his original $58.2 billion budget proposal. It would also include a transfer of an undisclosed amount from the medical malpractice fund.

The bill would not include Doyle's proposed tax on oil company revenues or deal with the state's road fund, which he said would be dealt with in a later special session.

Doyle also said his compromise would not include a $15 billion universal health-care plan proposed by Senate Democrats or an increase he previously proposed in a tax on people selling their homes.

I dunno. I still prefer going on with no new budget. The state will continue operating under the old one -- which means no new taxes and no new spending. I can think of worse things that could happen.

The Recess Supervisor has some commentary on the situation:

Mind you, Jim Doyle is currently working in a political environment where Corky Thatcher would look like Albert Einstein. What he's doing isn't exactly hard. He sits back, watches both sides look like idiots for three months, and now comes in to play the role of serious grown-up. The press and the public afford him all kinds of clout because Mike Huebsch and Judy Robson look like a couple of third-graders fighting over the lead in the school play.

Doyle, of course, is effectively forcing the AssGOP to show its hand. For months, Mike Huebsch has talked about compromise, while members of his caucus like Steve Nass are slipping out the back door and giving word to the base that the caucus isn't going to compromise and doesn't care if we have a budget. So there's seems to be a bit of disagreement on where, exactly, the AssGOP caucus stands on the budget.

I'm not saying that Doyle's bill can't be improved upon, or that further compromises cannot or should not be made. But it's high time that the AssGOP decides once and for all to fish or cut bait on this budget, and live with the consequences either way. Either it accepts that compromising with Democrats means raising some taxes, or it walks away for good and takes its case to the voters.

My money is on fish. There aren't enough zealots in that caucus to hold progress up.