It might just be the time of the night, but the more I think about the “Grand Compromise”, the more I realize those of us who don’t want to be #1 in taxation got rolled. First, let’s go back to the spending numbers, and assume that Healthy and Depopulated Wisconsin was never a serious proposal. Throwing that up against what was passed last night, Robson got 76.3% of her her $1,000,000,000 tax increase and 68.5% of difference in the increase in state-funds spending (the amount that comes directly from our pockets versus what comes from that plus what comes from the federal trough) between her plan and the sop thrown to us in southeast Wisconsin.
What’s worse is something that GOP 1st District vice-chair Bob Geason dug up (H/T – Recess Supervisor). Remember that total spending “reduction” from Doyle’s original budget? When all the bonding gets put into the spending equation, all but $345,091,300 of difference between the original and the Grand Compromise disappears. It’s way too late to come up with the bonding numbers from the three intermediate proposals, but the total bond-and-spend number in the original budget was $60,346,104,400. However, if memory serves, it’s safe to say say that the final bond-and-spend number of $59,998,013,100 is closer to Doyle’s original proposal and probably the H&DW-less Senate proposal than the Assembly “sop”.
Revisions/extensions (7:06 am 10/24/2007) – I took the time to make a quick run-through of both the Senate and Assembly plans for bonding. Adding the Senate-approved bonding to the Senate H&DW-less plan made that plan’s bond-and-spend number $61,292,741,000 (with H&DW, it would have been $68,892,741,000), and adding the Assembly-approved bonding to the Assembly’s “sop” plan made that plan’s bond-and-spend number $59,036,762,500. In short, Doyle got 73.4% of the difference in the total spending-and-bonding between his original plan and the Assembly plan, and Robson got 57.4% of the total spending-and-bonding between her plan and the Assembly plan, at least if you take out H&DW. Disgusting.
As Wile E. Coyote would say, “Brilliance! Sheer, unadulterated brillance!”
Revisions/extensions part 2 (7:07 pm 10/24/2007) – The tax increases were recalculated after I left for Madison early this morning.
