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6/9/2009
Bipartisan budget? We report. You decide.
Last Friday morning, state Assembly representatives Tom Nelson (D-Kaukauna), Penny Bernard Schaber (D-Appleton) and Al Ott (R-Brillion), and State Senators Rob Cowles (R-Green Bay) and Al Lasee (R-De Pere) encountered the wrath of their electorates at a community meeting. Needless to say, the subject was the state budget.
Rep. Ott reminisced about the good ol’ days when he was first elected (1986), when both parties actually sat down and shared ideas before putting a budget together.
Rep. Bernard Schaber responded a bit defensively, but trying to be respectful.
The state has a hard job ahead of it. We are working very hard on this budget. We have tried to talk with people on both sides of the aisle. I have gone around and talked to people at the capitol. The leadership on the Democrat side has guaranteed me because I’ve pressed them very hard on this, that they have made the effort to talk to people and I have to believe them… ok.
In the question-and-answer segment, Rep. Ott once again voiced his frustration at the process
…now when they come to the end they want us to help…. As someone who has always worked bi-partisan, I’m frustrated that there hasn’t been a more open process….
Now it was Majority Leader Nelson’s turn to respond. His voice was firm, perhaps because his neck was a little warm under its collar.
Getting back to November, the week after leadership elections. uh, the Republican leader had said publicly and privately that this budget is the Democrats’ problem. ‘It’s the Democrats’ problem and they’re not going to get a single Republican vote.’ Despite that…, both myself and Speaker Mike Sheridan have approached … the Republican leadership many many times. We did it back in February when we did the stimulus, we did it when we did the smoking ban and we did it during several session days and we did it again last week to allow for amendments and changes.
Every single time we have been rebuffed. We extended an olive branch and we keep doing it and after a while they take the olive branch and hit you over the head with it, you kind of get to learn a lesson. So, we have tried to go to them and bring them to the table … on several occasions; uh, we have most recently yesterday….
The truth was in there somewhere, wasn’t it?
I talked with Jim Bender, Communication Director for Assembly Republican Leader Jeff Fitzgerald. Funny that Bender couldn’t verify Nelson’s story.
About Fitzgerald’s ‘public and private’ statement, Bender said the ‘Dems doing the budget on their own’ comment came about early in the process in an interview, an offhanded comment to a reporter. After the Dems rolled through the supposed ‘budget repair bill,’ Bender recalled, Republicans got the message pretty clearly that Dems were doing the rest on their own.
According to Bender, members of the Republican leadership “have not been invited to the table – at all. One time, [Dem] JFC co-chairs gave a briefing and asked for some ideas. [Republican Assembly JFC members] Vos and Montgomery gave ideas. It was a token meeting only.”
Per Bender, Republican ideas weren’t touched, must less used. “Were we invited into any budget discussion? No. Never,” Fitzgerald’s aide recounts. In addition, the GOP never sat in the same room with Democrats and the nonpartisan budget whiz kids from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. According to Bender, Republicans had input into not one single document prepared for JFC. Zero. None – neither via JFC or in the leadership offices.
“Clearly,” Bender says, “they’re doing this on their own.”
Well, there was one meeting. I guess it’s what Nelson meant when he said he and his fellow leadership buddies tried to reach across the aisle “most recently yesterday…” According to Bender, the leaders met the week of June 1st for 12 minutes, with Dems asking “Is there any Republican support for this budget as it stands?”
Oh yeah. That’s rich. Republicans haven’t even had the bills to read beforehand, much less been invited to the party. And now they’re being asked for any support? Is that kind of like the kid who asks his dad’s permission when dad is sound asleep, just so he can say to mom that he already asked dad? Well, you know what I mean…
Jo Egelhoff, FoxPolitics.net
COMMENTS
Expecting a bipartisan budget is like spitting into the wind. The Dems funders are different than the R's funders. Doesn't have to be, but that's the way it is.
Jack Lohman (Wed Jun 10 09:49:24 2009)
This is the 20th Wisconsin budget I've watched being hatched, and they've never been bipartisan, even when the two houses and/or the governor's office were split among the parties.
Right or wrong (the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this morning said 'wrong') the budget is the most partisan document the Legislature produces in any given session.
The Journal Sentinel pleaded for "less political calculus...more acknowledgment of the extraordinary difficulties in crafting this document."
But neither party is prone to take prisoners at budget time. And the budget is shaped by the rhetoric of both parties, whether the minority has direct input or not. Each side is looking over its shoulder, and that influences what happens.
Certainly it would be better if the two parties could agree on a course to set, but that's not very likely.
Right or wrong, legislators of both parties feel compelled to head back to their districts and run on the state budget that was passed. Always have, and it looks like they always will.
Rich Eggleston (Tue Jun 09 10:57:23 2009)
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