Pledging Allegiance to Higher Taxes

By Christian Schneider

The long national nightmare brought on by the late Wisconsin State budget is now over.  Legislators can stop sleeping in the Capitol.  Newspapers can cease breathing into paper bags, and finally return to their usual reports of how your kid’s Halloween candy is poisoned, how Thanksgiving turkey puts you to sleep, and how your Christmas tree will more than likely burn your house down.  By next week, people will have forgotten this budget impasse ever took place – even as of this writing, it seems like the news cycle has passed.

Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch deserves a lot of credit for negotiating the best budget he could.  Huebsch was in a box that got smaller and smaller every day – and while the new budget certainly has flaws, it’s important to note that it is a negotiated document.  Everyone doesn’t get everything they want.

In fact, the Democratic Senate is so displeased with the end result of the budget process, they threw their leader overboard.  Democrats in the Senate believe they gave up too easily on budget items like the oil company tax, hospital tax, combined reporting tax increase, and the $15.2 billion “Healthy Wisconsin” plan.  All items Huebsch was able to scuttle through negotiation.

That being said, many conservatives are upset with the final budget.  The $1.00 per-pack cigarette tax increase, $200 million raid of the Patients Compensation Fund, and various automobile fee increases are like kryptonite to fiscal conservatives.  And it leaves one important question to ask: “What are the Republican achievements in this budget?”  Shouldn't budgets be about more than just blocking Democrat tax increases?

It wasn’t too long ago that Republicans held both the Assembly and the governorship, with Democrats controlling the Assembly.  The situation in those years shared much of the same dynamic as the process from this year – the budget went to conference committee, where it was negotiated with the oversight of a governor with a strong veto pen.  Before, it was Republicans Tommy Thompson and Scott McCallum.  Now it’s Democrat Jim Doyle.

Yet even in those years where the Chuck Chvala-led Senate Democrats were the minority in budget negotiations, they always emerged from the budget with some sound Democratic talking points.  The SAGE program was a new school spending program with the intent of shrinking school class sizes.  It was introduced by Governor Thompson, passed through the split-legislative negotiating process, and became law, where it is now a $98 million per-year program.  The SeniorCare prescription drug program was introduced by Governor McCallum, survived the 2001-03 budget, and has grown from a $59 million program in 2002-03 to a $141 million program in 05-06.  Other programs such as the  Stewardship land purchasing program emerged from similar budget negotiations.

Now, these are all programs Democrats readily take credit for.  In fact, when Chvala was attempting to evade his criminal charges, his supporting statements mentioned each one of these programs as Chvala-led initiatives to better the state of Wisconsin.  Yet they were passed out of a budget process dominated by Republicans. 

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, what tax cuts or spending reductions can Republicans take out of this budget and present to the voters?  The talking point seems to be that the Republican Assembly blocked some damaging Democrat-initiated tax increases, which is true.  But in previous budgets, Democrats weren’t simply content to block GOP plans – they went on offense to promote their own new taxes and spending.

Much of this can be attributed to how Mike Huebsch was forced to negotiate this budget.  In part,  Huebsch was undermined by his own caucus members, many of whom had signed inflexible pledges vowing not to vote for any budget containing tax increases.  This left him unable to present Democrats with a strong position from his caucus, as he would need at least half of the Assembly Democrats to vote with him to pass any budget out of his house.  Due to the pledges, he was forced not to negotiate directly with Jim Doyle, but to split his negotiations with Jim Doyle and Assembly Democratic leader Jim Kreuser.

In essence, the 27 Republican pledge-signers cut Huebsch off at the knees during negotiations.  Rather than pushing for a strong Republican agenda with good proactive conservative provisions, the Speaker had to settle for a diluted budget that barely offended Democrats.  Everyone knew he’d need a bucket of Democratic votes.

There’s no doubt that signing no-tax increase pledges is popular with conservative supporters.  Yet it’s a poor negotiating tactic.  Those Republicans who didn’t want to vote for a budget with tax increases were free to do so when the budget came to the floor – but telegraphing the vote count to the other side while negotiating the contents of the budget deal is just crazy.  I wouldn’t let the Assembly negotiate my next car purchase, much less a $58 billion spending document.

So while signing the pledges made a positive statement about individual members of the caucus, it may have crippled the caucus’ position as a whole.  The idea that half the Senate Democrats under the leadership of Chuck Chvala would have refused to vote for a budget that he negotiated on their behalf is ludicrous.  Each of those members would likely have been invited on an early morning fishing trip on Chvala’s boat.

It’s fine to criticize the contents of the budget as passed.  There’s plenty there of which to disapprove.  But it’s also important to understand how Republicans got to the point to which they did.  The Democrats were always going to demand a budget with tax increases – and with half the Assembly Republicans out of the way, they got what they wanted.