What a Fine Mess!
Sep 24th 2007ZacharyNews & Wisconsin Politics & Wisconsin State Budget
Last week Friday, Democrats in the State Senate offered to drop their universal health care plan if Republicans accepted higher taxes on hospitals and cigarettes and a 175 million dollar transfer from the Patients Compensation Fund. Senate Democrats have argued the tax increases - which would impose a surtax on hospital revenues and woulod raise the per-pack tax on cigarettes - are needed to pay future Medicaid bills and Gov. Jim Doyle’s plan to make sure every child has access to health insurance. In a big “f*** you” to Democrats - and Wisconsin’s kids - Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch flatly rejected the offer. Huebsch’s rejection of the Democrats’ offer should come as no big surprise, given his behavior during the entire budget process, but what I can’t help but wonder is if Senate Democrats finally gave up on trying to keep Healthy Wisconsin in the budget because of pressure from Governor Doyle, who made no secret of the fact that he didn’t support Healthy Wisconsin.
I’ll be curious to see how this whole mess plays out, because there’s only a few short days left before the state DPI is supposed to tell local school districts how much money they’re supposed to have for the next year, and without a budget, that’s going to be almost impossible to do.
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