When Almost $300 Million Is A Lot Of Money But $300 Million Isn’t.

JUST SAYIN’!

Governor Walker is facing a $283 deficit in the current budget that has to be satisfied before the end of June 2015. As we have all read here and in the other media, one of the sleight of hand tricks up every governor’s sleeve is deferring paying principal on state government debt and incurring further interest expenses for the taxpayers. But as Todd Berry, president of the Wisconsin Taxpayer’s Alliance, is quoted in a Bloomberg Politics article, that’s a lot of money to find through cuts:

“They need some cash,” said Todd Berry, president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, a nonpartisan research group that examines taxes and government spending. “This is kicking the can down the road.”

Berry said Walker has little room to maneuver.

“That’s a lot of money to try to find in four-to-five months, if you do it through cuts,” Berry said.

So it will be extremely hard for the governor to find $283 million in cuts from a $40 billion budget before the end of June while the University of Wisconsin should have no problem finding $300 million in cuts from a $7 billion budget in essentially the same time frame (actually a shorter period because the actual state budget probably won’t be complete before April).

Maybe if the governor stayed home a bit more, he’d have time to work this out. Ya think?

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4 thoughts on “When Almost $300 Million Is A Lot Of Money But $300 Million Isn’t.

  1. So if the Governor achieves his obvious dream of becoming president, what will he be busy campaigning for instead of governing then? Emperor? President for life? Will he change the US Constitution like he did the WI Constitution to fit his ambitions? Where will “God tell him” [as he indicates] to go from there?

  2. Excellent find! What’s sauce for the goose… however that goes.

    And now, a one act play inspired by Alberta Darling and John Nygren.

    WIGOP: Yeah, we’d like you to take Wisconsin’s internationally renowned 26-campus higher education system, with its 180,000 students and 35,000 employees and just totally reorganize it into a public authority…

    UW: OK-

    WIGOP: … in the next 4 months…

    UW: Well, um-

    WIGOP: … and absorb a 13% cut in state aid, without raising tuition…

    UW: That’s not going to-

    WIGOP: …and do it with a smile on your face!!

    UW: That really paints us into a corner here. I don’t know how we do that without some serious layoffs and cuts to programs.

    WIGOP: Well maybe if your faculty weren’t so lazy…

    UW: Wait, like 10 seconds ago you just said we were world renowned. Can’t we talk about this? There’s gotta be a better way-

    WIGOP: Now you’re just being divisive!

    UW: What? That doesn’t even make sense.

    WIGOP: Washington Politics! Obama! Benghazi!! JIM DOYLE!!!!

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