What is the budget situation in WI?

[GKirk]

Is there a crisis?
Are wholesale cuts going to have to be made?
If yes, where do you see these cuts being made?

[Jackpine Radical]

1. The crisis in the upcoming biennium was manufactured by Walker,

who gave roughly $150 million in tax breaks to corporations immediately upon taking office & then went after the state employees to make up the "shortfall."

Word has it that a 2-3 bil deficit will arrive in the next biennium (2013). It could readily be solved by creating a new top income tax bracket @ $250K per family and assessing an additional 1% income tax on the top end.

[GKirk]

4. I want to spread the word in Michigan

because the tide is coming our way soon. But I want to be accurate.

Do you have any math to show me how increasing taxes on the top bracket will pay for the 2-3 billion dollar shortfall?

[Jackpine Radical]

5. No math, but here's a great link:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27664.htm


On Wednesday evening, in a veritable Night of the Long Knives, Wisconsin's integrity was brutally murdered on the floor of the state Capitol in Madison. On 9 March, integrity and trust built up over a century was obliterated as Wisconsin state senators quickly reversed course and cleaved its budget "repair bill" in half. Financial items require a quorum, thus, collective bargaining was split off from the budget repair bill and voted on separately so as to permit its being voted on now. Even so, this still broke the state's open meeting law requiring 24 hours' notice to ensure transparency. Instead, the Wisconsin senate Republicans pulled out this new legislation without advance notice and began voting, leaving only a stunned Democratic legislator, Peter Barca, to read the open meeting law out loud to prevent the senators from voting. The senate voted over his objections anyway.

The Wisconsin brand has always centered on integrity. This was really about the only distinctive comparative advantage the state could lay claim to. Now, it is gone. With collective bargaining abolished, huge issues remain beyond labor. The privatization of public assets is now on the agenda, with the yet-to-be-voted-on budget repair bill.

Wisconsin is a state that invented Progressive Era Republican rule in the 19th and early 20th centuries under such progressive populists as Robert LaFollette. Under their tenure, rent-seeking from the public domain and similar insider corruption were checked by a strong public sector anchored in integrity. The state's long history of reforms nurtured a prosperous middle class and made it a model of clean government, solid infrastructure, trade unionism and high value-added industry managed by socialists and the LaFollette Progressives.

Fast-forward to Scott Walker today. Representing a new breed apart from Wisconsin's earlier Republicans, he is seeking to re-birth the asset-grabbing Gilded Age. A plague of rent-seekers is seeking quick gains by privatizng the public sector and erecting tollbooths to charge access fees to roads, power plants and other basic infrastructure.

[GKirk]

6. I know all about that...

...and so does most of the country. I want to know just what has to be done to balance the budget.

Raise taxes? Fine. How much?

[Jackpine Radical]

7. You can start with this link:

http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lfb/Informationalpapers/1_General%20Fund%20Tax%20Collections.pdf

[Sabien]

2. to "balance" the budget you have to...

actually balance the spending side with the revenue side.

Currently, our state is out of balance because it spends more than it receives.

So the only solutions being considered by our current state legislature and Governor involve removing items from the spending side of the scale. They refuse to even acknowledge that another tool exists - that is to raise additional revenue for our great state.

If you're paying attention, you realize that it's a moving target because in fact they are also removing items from the revenue side by passing more and more tax breaks for corporations, and the wealthy. That requires even more items have to be removed from the spending side of the scale.

These additional items come, in part, with the significant pay cut for all public employees.

[Viking12]

3. When the only tool you know is....

..everything looks like it is on the chopping block,