JFC Co-chairs Ready for Philosophical Budget Battle
The battle lines of the 2007-09 budget, what Hudson GOP Rep. Kitty Rhoades calls "deep philosophical divides," have been drawn this week during agency briefings before the Joint Finance Committee."
The question is should the state live within its means? I believe yes," said Rhoades, the co-chair of the budget-writing committee, today in an interview with WisPolitics. "That's how you build stable programs. It doesn't do any good to go build some new great Cadillac program and then go, 'Oh, by the way we can't afford this.' Now you've put people's lives at risk, and you haven't governed."
Partisan differences have been most apparent in discussions over Gov. Jim Doyle's proposals to institute a 2.5 percent tax on oil companies to pay for state road needs, and a 1 percent assessment on hospitals that the administration says will capture more federal money for medical assistance reimbursements.
Rhoades' co-chair, Dem Sen. Russ Decker of Weston, said the GOP philosophy of "cut, cut, cut us into prosperity" isn't working."
"Democrats are siding up with Jim Doyle's proposal to go after the oil companies for the franchise fee," Decker told WisPolitics. "And for the life of me I can't figure out why anyone is opposed to bringing 575 million more federal dollars into this state, and the hospitals would get a rebate of $290 million than what they're getting now."
Rhoades said she would prefer that the state budget using available revenues, and build programs accordingly. But, she didn't say that the budget proposed by the governor will be scrapped and rebuilt.
"That will be a negotiated process," she said. "We haven't had this dynamic or this galaxy of a Democratic governor with split houses since Patrick Lucey. There's not a lot of historians walking around saying, 'This is how you do it.'"
Click here to listen to an interview with Rhoades.
Click here to listen to an interview with Decker.
