Doyle: State stimulus will create jobs, boost revenues
Gov. Jim Doyle said today's state stimulus package announcement will be focused on creating jobs and enacting cuts and revenue uppers to help balance the state budget.
"I think what we're talking about is a good package and one that will help us significantly," Doyle said during a media availability in Milwaukee. "It's going to be both something that will help us a lot with the budget and it's something that will also help us to create jobs."
The package will include measure aimed at stimulating job creation and getting the state lined up with the forthcoming federal stimulus act to ensure the state cam put people to work quickly, Doyle said.
Doyle said it will also include "some of the very deep cuts" that will need to be made to balance the budget.
"We better start making them starting now," Doyle said.
The hospital assessment will be among revenue uppers included in the package, he said.
"Clearly the hospital assessment is something we should get done and need to get done in order to access federal money," Doyle said.
Doyle dismissed claims that the assessment is a tax and faulted Republicans in the Legislature for blocking it in the past.
"They have fought against what they call the hospital tax for all of these years," Doyle said. "The fact is, even the hospitals support it. They don't think it's a tax. It's not a tax. It's a way we can get more federal money into the state."
"While most other states have been receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government for years, because of the Republicans in the Legislature, we have not been able to do that," Doyle continued. "That's just nonsense. We're now at a point where we can't play these games."
