I encourage everyone to read the Kenosha News story on the state budget from today: "Governor Scott Walker signed a two-year state budget just after 2 p.m. on Sunday, and with the approximately $70 billion spending plan came 57 vetoes. But Walker didn’t hold a private assembly at Catalyst Exhibits in Pleasant Prairie to talk about what he crossed off of his plan — he wanted to talk about everything the new budget was going to do for the state. “This is a great budget ... for the hardworking taxpayers of the state of Wisconsin ,” he told a small crowd in Catalyst’s warehouse. Not everyone agreed the budget was what the state needs right now. Assembly Minority Party Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, countered Walker’s claims in a press conference convened at Kenosha City Hall. “It’s not a budget for the middle class,” he said. “Wisconsin has greatly lagged the rest of the country and the entire midwest in jobs, and the middle class has had a very difficult time with it.” According to Walker, the budget includes nearly $1 billion in tax relief for everyone from individuals and small business owners to those businesses in the manufacturing and agriculture industries. “Let’s put it in perspective,” Walker said. “Four years ago at this time when the last governor ... passed and signed the budget, it was a lot different. That budget four years ago included billions of dollars in tax increases to taxpayers of the state, and billions more on local property taxpayers ... It was a budget that because of those decisions, just two years later it passed on to us a $3.6 billion budget deficit.” As of Sunday, which was the end of the fiscal year, Walker said the state ended with more than a $500 million surplus. “We don’t want to go back to the days of double-digit tax increases, billion dollar budget deficits and record job loss,” he said. “We want to build off of the positive foundation that we’ve put in place to move this state forward.” Walker said by lowering the income tax for everyone in the state, the money will then be pumped back into the economy thus allowing businesses to expand and hire more people. Walker’s numbers were challenged by Barca as having much smaller an impact for the low- to middle-class in Wisconsin. Although tax policy does make a difference, the various provisions in the budget will not have the stimulant affect on the economy Walker said it would have, according to Barka, because the tax breaks are not even for all incomes. The average tax cut for the average working family will be less than $10 per month, Barka said, while those making over $300,000 will see roughly 10 times that amount, with an average tax cut of $125 per month. “Going forward with this budget, we’re going to lead the country in ensuring that everyone who gets public assistance ... doesn’t make it a permanent hand out.” Walker said, pointing to $100 million in additional job training funds in the budget. “We give them the power, and the incentive and the focus to understand the dignity that only comes through work.” Barka said Walker’s initiative to improve job training didn’t add up either. “I found it remarkable when I saw the press accounts this morning and the governor bragged about the fact that there’s $100 million in there for job training,” Barka said. “Because what’s so evident to most of the public is he cut the vocational colleges by nearly a third, and yet in this budget we’re not even restoring a third of those funds. We’re not keeping pace in those arenas we know would actually stimulate the economy and increase jobs.” Barka than called Walker’s changes to healthcare, which Barka said charges taxpayers over $100 million more in order to insure 85,000 less people, the worst decision in a generation. “Any CEO of any company would be fired immediately with that kind of economic approach to things,” he said. “It’s unfortunate, because we had a golden opportunity in this budget where we had a surplus, where we could have done something meaningful...we could have stimulated the economy by focusing tax cuts on the middle class, which the governor started this budget debate on, but failed to deliver.” Rep. JoCosta Zamarripa, D-Milwaukee called Walker’s budget a “political axe to grind,” because Milwaukee’s Mayor Tom Barrett decided to run against Walker in the recall last year. Zamarripa said some of the points in the budget directly and severely hurt Milwaukee, such as lifting the residency requirement for law enforcement and firefighters, which Milwaukee has used for some time. Barka said Walker is “doubling down on the same policies he has had the last two years that have made this state one of the worst in the nation and the worst in the midwest.”"
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 03:55:25 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015