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HOWARD
DEAN FOR GOVERNOR?
DOYLE
FREEZES TAXES AND GOP STILL GOES ON RABID ATTACK
WatchdogMilwaukee’s rip roarin’ 2005-06 state budget
redux
by John-David Morgan
February 11, 2005
Governor Jim Doyle
released his 2005-06 budget Tuesday night, announcing a two-year
property tax freeze, renewed commitment to schools and health care,
and the restoration of shared state revenue to municipalities that
was slashed four years ago during Republican Gov. Scott McCallum’s
administration.
By freezing
property taxes for two years, Doyle, a Democrat, stole Republican
sound-bite thunder for his reelection bid in 2006 -- but that still
left plenty for the GOP grist-mill. Republicans, who control both
houses of the Legislature, found next-to-nothing to like about the
Doyle budget, and WTMJ radio’s Mark Reardon gave them more than an
hour of unadulterated air-time after Tuesday’s Bucks game to carp
about it.
“We all know
schools are our biggest priority, and the biggest part of our
budget,” said Assembly Republican Majority Leader John Gard (R --
Peshtigo). “But let’s not throw gas onto the fire.”
In delivering the
budget, Doyle’s message was that Wisconsin is “On the Move”
with health care, education and growth of new manufacturing jobs.
It’s not clear where Gard sees gas in those priorities, but the
governor did warn Republican legislators that he would get out his
veto pen if they send back to him another budget that fails to fund
the schools, as they did with his 2003-04 budget.
The main
conservative gripe in this budget is Doyle’s property tax freeze.
Gard argued that, although it freezes state property taxes, the
Doyle property tax freeze is no property tax freeze at all, but is
instead a recipe for a property tax increase.
Doyle’s property
tax freeze would sunset in two years, just in time for the 2007-2008
budget. Doyle explained in his budget address that it made little
sense to freeze property taxes three years from now, not knowing
what budget commitments the state would have to make in 2008. Still,
while Doyle’s budget really does freeze property taxes for the
next two years, Gard and the Republicans called for a “real
property tax freeze.”
Milwaukee County
Executive Scott Walker, who is campaigning to be the Republican
candidate to run against Doyle in 2006, got in on the WTMJ action,
thanks to taped comments from a press conference earlier in the
evening. “This budget does nothing to freeze property taxes,”
Walker chimed, locking in step with Gard. One thing that cannot be
denied about Republicans these days -- they do an excellent job of
sticking together with simple, repetitive messages, whether the
messages ring true or not.
HOWARD
DEAN FOR GOVERNOR: REPUBLICANS HOPE
TO DIVIDE PUBLIC OVER DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIPS
Gard also singled
out Doyle’s plan to extend health benefits to the domestic
partners of gay state employees, similar to the city of
Milwaukee’s benefits for same-sex partners whose relationships are
legal unions. “It’s like Howard Dean became governor in the
state of Wisconsin tonight,” Gard protested to a chuckling
WTMJ’s Reardon. If that’s supposed to demonize Doyle as a
liberal, we’ll gladly take it in Wisconsin, where gay partners
need a champion in Madison.
This is a direct
challenge from Doyle to the Republican “Defense of Marriage”
rhetoric surrounding the gay marriage ban making its way through the
Legislature. With the Legislature to vote on the Defense of Marriage
Act this session, Republicans are now spreading the message that the
act is not targeted to hurt anyone (gay couples) by taking away
their legal rights. One of the act’s sponsors, State Sen. Scott
Fitzgerald (R -- Town of Clyman) told reporters last month that
banning “marriage” status for gay couples would not deny them
legal domestic partner rights.
Those comments were
a switch, because last year Fitzgerald said that the gay marriage
ban was specifically designed to invite the courts to decide the
legality of gay civil unions and domestic partnerships. The Family
Research Institute, which is lobbying heavily for the gay marriage
ban, strictly opposes any recognition of legal “union” status
for same-sex couples.
Maybe having Doyle
in the governor’s office is a bit like having Howard Dean around.
Doyle’s proposal
would effectively broaden legal recognition of gay state
employees’ relationships and provide more health care coverage in
the state. By putting the benefits in the budget, the governor is
daring Republicans to put their cards on the table and show the
punitive side of their “Defense of Marriage” Act. Is the ban
really designed to strengthen marriage and families in the state, as
Fitzgerald said recently? Or is it an amoral attempt to
disenfranchise gay citizens of Wisconsin? If legislators remove the
health benefits from the budget, the smoke screen clears away from
the GOP rhetoric, and voters see the gay marriage ban for what it
is: an attack on the legal rights of gay Wisconsinites.
MONEY TRAINS
There’s no
shortage of conservative complaint elsewhere in the Democratic
budget. Doyle cuts state overhead, but also raises hunting license
and auto registration fees. Doyle proposes using gas tax revenues to
help get two-thirds of school funding back off of the property tax;
conservatives want to keep gas tax funds for highway projects;
progressives would like to see it go toward mass transit options.
Doyle has earmarked $800,000 for Metra’s planned
Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee (KRM) commuter line.
The budget would
use the state’s $700 million-plus patient protection fund to
provide health care for seniors, and support Badger Care and other
programs. The patient protection fund is for malpractice insurance,
which helps keep patients and doctors out of the courts; it is
estimated to be have at least $200 million more in the bank than
will be needed for years. The fund, Doyle says, is not at risk, and
he proposes using the excess to help cover the health care needs of
180,000 people in the state. Maybe Doyle does think he’s Howard
Dean, who managed to provide health insurance throughout the state
of Vermont when he was governor.
INVASION OF THE
BUREAUCRAT NURSES
After the property
tax, the next big conservative budget target (this week) is a new
program that would provide a free home care visit for new families,
allowing nurses to check on the health of newborn babies if the
parents choose to have the visit. The plan is designed to ensure
that at-risk infants have the care they need after they leave the
hospital.
This relatively
small program had Gard grumbling about Doyle “not sharing the
priorities of the people of Wisconsin.” The people of Wisconsin,
of course, want government out of their lives, Gard argued, not home
visits from people who work for the government. WTMJ host Reardon
didn’t bother to ask Gard if his set of “anti-government family
values” applied when the health of a newborn baby is at stake
But Doyle’s baby
visit program also has some Democrats scratching their heads. Jeff
Plale, a conservative Dem from South Milwaukee, whose district
includes the East Side of Milwaukee, wondered whether people would
want a home visit after having a baby. “The house is a mess,
you’ve got your suitcase from the hospital to unpack … The last
thing you want is a visit from a bureaucrat from the state.”
A “bureaucrat”?
Plale has obviously bought into the conservative mentality that
makes “government program” a couple of dirty words in American
culture. It’s no small wonder that Plale, who was genuinely
surprised that the baby visit program was in the budget, was the
Democrat WTMJ’s Reardon asked to appear on his show. But the
anti-government rhetoric that Reardon’s Democratic spokesman has
adopted ignores what the Doyle baby visit program sets out to
accomplish. The program is optional for parents, and is, again,
designed to ensure the health of at-risk babies. The bureaucrat
making the visit would be a health care provider (a nurse, for
example) who would be there to do a check-up. It’s puzzling how a
Democrat from Milwaukee could see an invasion of government
bureaucrat nurses in the new program.
Howard Dean for
governor? Doyle has made a very strong statement of Democratic
values on health care, education, job creation and taxation in his
budget. To Republicans, accustomed to the steady stream of kneejerk
conservatism that fills the airwaves -- and to Democrats like Plale
-- the appearance of real Democratic values in the state must indeed
seem as though Howard Dean has come to work in Madison.
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