Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, WI, June 7, 2009
The state budget is bad bet for Wisconsin’s future You must do better than this. took three to five years for tax collections to recover to the level where they were at the start of the recessions, according to a report from the Rockefeller Institute of Government. The forecast for the current recession, which has produced the biggest drop-off in state tax collections in 50 years, calls for tax revenue to require more than five years to return to the starting point. “This is an awful time for states fiscally, but they’re even more worried about 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014,” Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers, told the Wall Street Journal. In Wisconsin, the worries ought to be compounded by a 2009-11 budget plan that blindly assumes the future will be rosy.
That should be Wisconsin’s response to the state budget proposal to go before the Assembly for a vote this week. This budget amounts to a huge, irresponsible gamble likely to haunt the state for years. Rather than seizing the current economic downturn to put the state’s fiscal house in better order for the future, the Legislature’s budget committee shrank from the opportunity. The committee, closely following Gov. Jim Doyle’s flawed blueprint, simply slapped patches on budget holes. They tapped one-time federal stimulus aid and reached down paths of least resistance for tax Even if the lawmakers’ gamble with this budget increases — on everything from cell phones to cigapays off — despite overwhelming odds — the state rettes to oil — and for cuts with effects they could dewill simply return to the precarious position it was in lay — most notably reductions in aid to schools that when this year began. That means lurching from won’t be fully felt until 2011. budget crisis to budget crisis because of the way The result is a budget built on the bet that the Legislatures and governors for years have spent economy will be humming along, and tax collections money and put off the day of reckoning to the next rolling in again, in time to bail out the state by the budget in the hope that economic growth will bail time this budget ends in two years. them out. The co-chairmen of the budget committee conAll because the state this year passed up the firmed that view in a meeting with the State Journal chance to reform the way it does business. editorial board last week. There is still time to improve this budget. The “Growth will be back” within two years, pre- State Journal editorial board has already recomdicted Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison. mended important changes. On Friday we called for “What we’re going through now is what we all the removal of millions of dollars in pork inserted at hope is a one-time hole,” said Sen. Mark Miller, the last minute by the budget committee. On Saturday we pushed for elimination of non-fiscal policy D-Monona. Hope is a wonderful thing, but not when it is the items from the budget so they can be considered as separate bills. foundation for a $63 billion budget. The budget as it stands falls far short of the budFollowing the last three recessions — in 1981, get Wisconsin deserves. Lawmakers should fix it. 1990 and 2001 — states nationwide found that it
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