WisPolitics.com: Huebsch, Plale Display Party Differences on Taxes, Health Care
WAUWATOSA -- Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch and state Sen. Jeff Plale, appearing before a business audience Wednesday, sent sharply contrasting responses to Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle's budget.
"We don't see why we need to raise any taxes," said Huebsch, R-West Salem, the Legislature's top Republican. He called Doyle's $1.7 billion in proposed tax boosts the "biggest challenge'' for Republicans in rewriting the budget.
But Huebsch, though given the chance, didn't rule out any specific tax boost proposed by Doyle, apparently preserving his options as Republicans continue to study the massive document.
Plale, D-South Milwaukee and the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said it was likely that the cigarette tax boost and oil companies profits tax would pass in some form, but he didn't predict at what level.
Plale said such boosts were likely because the alternatives - raising the income or sales tax, or both - would not be a "tasteful solution" for the voters.
He called the proposed budget "responsible and fair" and praised Doyle's targeted middle-class tax cuts
But Huebsch, bemoaning a "spending spree" in Madison, said the state needs to get spending "back in line with people's ability to pay.''
The legislators appeared at a breakfast briefing on the budget organized by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and the Waukesha County Chamber of Commerce. The event was held at the GE Healthcare Clinical Systems Headquarters at the Milwaukee County Research Park.
Both legislators said health care costs will be a big concern in the budget but disagreed on how to provide more access for the uninsured.
"Universal health care is a universal goal," Huebsch said, adding Republicans wanted to get there through a more free market health care system. He also said Doyle's "tax scam,'' funded by a hospital assessment he called a "sick tax,'' would result in a "serious crisis'' down the road when the federal government blocked the maneuver.
Plale in turn said some action on health care would need to be carried out at the federal level. He said state measures to reduce health care costs are just "nibbling around the edges." Plale suggested legislators would work to help hospitals negatively impacted by the proposal. "It's got a long way to go,'' he said.
On other budget issues:
--Both agreed on the need to maintain two-thirds funding of schools. But while Plale said Doyle's plan to repeal the QEO "probably'' would pass, Huebsch was adamant that the qualified economic offer would stand. "We need to have a balance there,'' Huebsch said, suggesting higher-paid teachers would be using 15-year-old textbooks if the QEO were repealed and revenue caps were left in place.
--Both legislators said continuing to put money in highway repairs in the Milwaukee-Chicago corridor would prove beneficial to the economy all around the state. "We never fully built the freeway system in Milwaukee that we should have," Plale said, adding he also supports the project that would extend Metra train lines into southeastern Wisconsin. And while Huebsch agreed that improving transit in southeastern Wisconsin is important, he said it should not be done at the neglect of other projects around the state. "We don't believe we need to do that,'' Huebsch said.
-- By Dan Polley
