We’ve Had Enough - Reviewing the Budget
One of the biggest impacts the legislature has on you and your family is the biennial budget. Here is the basic timeline. Every Autumn in even years, the state agencies put together their “budget requests” for the next budget. These requests get submitted in November. In February of the odd year, the Governor, after considering the budget requests from the agencies, introduces his budget to the legislature in his budget address to the legislature (sorry gals, so far it been a “his budget” type of thing). The budget then goes to the Joint Committee on Finance where they make any changes they deem necessary. Finally, the budget goes to the legislature where it needs to pass both houses by a simple majority vote. The governor can then veto all or parts of the budget and the legislature can override those vetoes with a two thirds majority vote in each house.
As I have been reporting, the spending is out of control, and I do not see any relief in sight. As a matter of fact, unless something changes very soon, I see no way that we can continue. Milt Friedman once said if it can’t go on… it won’t. The only question is whether we actually stop the spending or the economy crashes to the point that we no longer can maintain the socio-economic structure we have today.
Let’s get started-
Below is a link to the WI State Legislature Homepage:
https://legis.wisconsin.gov/
Click the Service agency tab then the Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) tab - You should be here https://legis.wisconsin.gov/lfb
Click publications and in the drop box select the budget you wish to review. In our case the 2023-2035 budget.
You will see a long list of reports that are prepared by the LFB and anyone who wishes to get down in the weeds I encourage you to spend some (rainy days) getting familiar with the reports. For this exercise I suggest selecting the Comparative Summary of Provisions -- 2023 Act 19 -- August. 2023 (Summary Tables) pdf. This represents the finished budget that was signed into law and is in affect today.
On page 29 you’ll find a summary of all spending and on page 32 you’ll see how’s its broken down by category.
The first column is the amount of funding for the previous year doubled (because it’s a two-year budget and showing the change in spending using the last year of spending doubled makes them look better).
The other columns are fairly self-explanatory. The progression goes from the governor to joint finance to the legislature to the actual ACT that becomes the budget.
For more information and details, you can go to the entire budget or review the pdf that shows spending by agency. Have plenty of Pepto-Bismol on hand, as you will get heartburn looking at all the spending done by our republican led legislature.
Candidates should email me at bill.savage62@gmail.com and we can set up a phone call to discuss further.
Rest assured that your republican legislators voted in favor of every budget for the past 10 or so budgets as we have very few that did not.
:)