Is a state budget compromise close?

Here are some of the issues:

"Proposals to fix it include delaying a $125 million payment of state aid to schools, refinancing bonds from tobacco settlement payments and taking money from the state's transportation fund to be replaced with increased borrowing."

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Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston, will address Assembly Democrats next Tues., May 6, signaling a compromise may be close.

The options for closing the $525 million deficit are mostly cobbled-together short-term fixes, and if nothing is decided, Governor Doyle said yesterday we can all expect roadwork delays. If you've driven the I-94 corridor between Madison and Milwaukee recently, you're familiar with the black holes that lead to alternate universes of expensive car repair. Be scared commuters.

Thing is, the republicans need democrats on their side to wrap this up. Who's going to bend and on what?

This is the "progress" we've been waiting for on the state budget?

Senate Democrats agree to take their Healthy Wisconsin health care plan off the table, replacing it with a package to fund BadgerCare for children with a higher cigaret tax and assessment on hospitals.

And get nothing in return?

WisPolitics reports:

[Dem Leader Sen. Judy] Robson responded that at the very minimum, the Dems will require that all children in the state are covered with health insurance, and all childless families are eligible for BadgerCare. To pay for it, she said, the Dems will insist on the proposed $1.25 per pack cigarette tax increase.

[Republican Assembly Speaker Michael] Huebsch said he will accept their withdrawal of Healthy Wisconsin. "But I am offering you nothing in return," he said.

The last time I recall encountering that kind of attitude at the bargaining table, it led to a bitter strike that lasted two years.

As everyone's been clamoring for the Senate Dems to give up on their creative and far-reaching plan to insure everyone in Wisconsin, was the expectation that they'd just take Healthy Wisconsin, their biggest proposal, out of the budget and expect nothing in return?

"Just because Senator [Scott]Fitzgerald is failing to do his job doesn't mean Governor Doyle should stop doing his." -- Doyle spokesman Matt Canter on Fitzgerald's suggestion that Doyle cancel a trade mission to work on the state budget.

It is the legislature's responsibility to pass a budget and send it to Doyle, although Fitzgerald seems to think otherwise.

The Republicans have caved on their main state budget initiative, the AP reports:

By SCOTT BAUER/The Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. — Republicans are backing away from their proposed tax break on buying gold bullion.

Gov. Jim Doyle and Democrats have latched onto the tax break included in the budget passed by Assembly Republicans as an example of how irresponsible the plan is.

Republicans proposed removing the tax break at Thursday’s meeting of a bipartisan committee trying to reach a budget compromise. The sales tax exemption would have covered the sale of collector coins and other currency as well as gold bullion. It primarily would have benefited coin dealers and collectors and at a cost to the state of about $250,000 a year.

With that out of the way, the conference committee should be able to wrap up work on the state budget in no time.

Republicans just hate, hate policy being adopted as part of a state budget bill. They've told us that repeatedly, whenever Gov. Jim Doyle has included any policy changes in his budget proposals.

But that was then. This is now.

The Republican majority in the Assembly has just produced its version of the budget and -- surprise! -- it's a cynical, hard-hearted, partisan document that is just chock full of policy changes.

My favorite policy change in the Journal Sentinel story:

ending the ability of residents to vote a straight party ticket

If you were a Republican these days, that would make a lot of sense.

At the rate their popularity is falling, the GOP may just want to think about eliminating party labels on the ballot altogether.

Nice try, but that, like most of the hairball budget the Assembly GOP hacked up is in no danger of becoming law,

You didn't read that headline on Saturday's Journal Sentinel story.

Instead, the focus was on when Assembly Republicans first started to consider blocking passage of the state budget.

Under normal circumstances, in an objective report, this would appear to be the most important part of the story:

Not passing a budget, however, would require property taxes to rise by $357 million more than Doyle's budget proposes, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated. A budget impasse also would halve the number of road projects and force large cuts in spending at prisons and the University of Wisconsin System, according to figures in a Fiscal Bureau memo requested by Assembly Republicans.

As we said earlier, this tactic is one that could blow up in the GOP's face.

UPDATE: Paul Soglin agrees.

It's a little too early for this sort of bluster, but Speaker Mike Huebsch says Assembly Republicans may refuse to pass a state budget.

Before he leads his party too far down that path, Huebsch might want to touch bases with Newt Gingrich when he's in Wisconsin tomorrow.

Gingrich, you may recall, was the architect of the 1995 shutdown of the federal government, in a showdown with President Bill Clinton.

Gingrich and the GOP were emboldened by a sweep in the 1994 Congressional midterm elections which gave Republicans control.

But Gingrich and Co. overplayed their hand, and, while achieving some of their budget objectives, paid a huge political price for losing the public relations war. Gingrich left government not too long after that disaster.

And Gingrich arguably had a mandate at the time. Huebsch and Wisconsin Republicans, on the other hand, had their heads handed to them in November, losing control of the State Senate and suffering big losses in the Assembly, while Gov. Jim Doyle was re-elected handily.

This does not seem like the time to be making threats and forcing an impasse.