Senate Dems have their say on state budget

Senate Dems have their say on state budget

The Associated Press

MADISON — Domestic partner benefits for state workers, guaranteed insurance coverage for autistic children and a $15 billion universal health care plan were expected to be added to the state budget by the Democratic-controlled Senate today.

The additions may be short-lived.

After the budget clears the Senate, expected to happen today, it moves to the Assembly where Republicans have vowed to strip all tax increases and many of Gov. Jim Doyle’s major proposals, in addition to Senate Democrats’ pet projects.

Differences in the two budgets will have to be worked out by a special bipartisan committee consisting of lawmakers from both the Senate and Assembly. Doyle must sign the budget before it takes effect.

Because that won’t happen until well after the start of the new fiscal year on July 1, state government will continue operating under existing spending levels.

Toay’s debate in the Senate marked the first time lawmakers have taken up the two-year, $58 billion spending plan since it advanced out of the Joint Finance Committee earlier this month.

Many of the changes expected to be made by Democrats were largely symbolic, or offered as bargaining chips, in advance of more negotiations to come in the budget process.

The biggest expected addition by far was the $15 billion universal health care plan that business groups assailed at a hearing Monday as being too expensive and too radical a change. But labor groups, retirees and others praised the plan, calling it an innovative way to guarantee health coverage for nearly all Wisconsinites.

Democrats control the Senate 18-15, which means as long as party members stay together they can put anything they want into the budget and Republicans are powerless to stop them. The reverse is true in the Assembly, where Republicans have the majority 52-47.

Senate Democrats were not expected to touch most of the major parts of the budget plan that made it out of committee. Those included a $1.25 per pack cigarette tax increase; a 0.8 percent tax on hospitals; a tax on oil company sales; increases in fees to register vehicles and get a driver’s license; doubling local property tax caps; an expansion of the state’s health insurance program for low-wage workers; and a $175 million transfer from the patients’ compensation fund to pay for Medicaid and other health care expenses.

source: www.greenbaypressgazette.com