It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Just one of thousands of news articles:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/18/AR2011021807527.html


The Unions, state workers, and Democratic officials are willing to concede to the budget cuts as long as Walker doesn't destroy collective bargaining. Walker is conceding nothing.

Is it true you had a balanced state budget, then they recently passed a bunch of spending and tax cuts, now there's a budget crisis?

From memory, I wanna say that Wisconsin's deficit now is about $137 million. From what I know, we're on track to having a $3.6 billion dollar deficit in two years. Walker's plan will supposedly save $300 million in that same two year time. That's only 8% of the deficit! What is planned for the other 92%?

Edit: fixed current deficit number

Edited by T.L. on 02/19/2011 01:13:47 MST.

Travis, you should write them a check to cover it.

--B.G.--

But how would I pay for any new gear!?

8 million in cut backs=100 million in spending=deficit reduced by 1 million over 10 years.
Printing trillions of dollars only goes so far... soon a pack will cost 3 times as much as a loaf of bread. downside, loaf of bread will be 9 million dollars.

I looked into it further...mind you that I'm tired, and its late, and my "research" consisted of reading a few news articles. So, I can't be for certain what I'm about to say.

Apparently, our budget was pretty balanced. In January, Walker quickly doled out $140 million in tax breaks to huge corporations, including Walmart. This was done to create the basis for this new bill which attacks the unions in an attempt to cut spending and balance the budget.

People are claiming that Walker "invented" our $140 million deficit to propagate the Republican agenda.

Again, I've not had the time to really look into these claims, so if anyone comes up with more solid information, please let me know.

Edited by T.L. on 02/19/2011 01:14:29 MST.

move to canada, we have jobs, money, we speak English (except for some province of Quebec or something) and A LOT of space outdoors

$140 million would just be rounded off here in the Not-So-Golden State!! No thanks to our ineffective 'governator', our dysfunctional legislature, and our "gimme gimme" electorate -- California's budget deficit is around $25.4 BILLION!! Yes, that's $25,400 million. No one here would bat an eye over $140. We have more people here, of course, but even taking that into account, we've got one heck of a mess.

Edited by ben2world on 02/19/2011 02:03:59 MST.

Ben, California's deficit is about half of what Canada's is.

And California has more people than Canada! However, it's probably 'unfair' to compare a state's deficit against a national deficit...

Edited by ben2world on 02/19/2011 01:58:57 MST.

Regarding the earlier claim that Walker invented the crisis:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/wi-fiscal-bureau-chief-walker-tax-cuts-did-not-cause-years-budget-shortfall_550399.html


Crazy. I'll be following the news...

Good article

Weekly Standard is conservative by the way

It says the deficits are due to legislative actions recently taken

But it's confusing whether those actions were prudent or optional

This is a good example of how confusing politics is right now

One other thing I heard

The public employees are willing to negotiate on wages and pension and health care

But the governor insists that the union be eliminated

Another thing is that the police union supported Walker in his election and coincidently he doesn't insist that they give up their union

Here in Oregon and I suspect in California they made agreements about pensions

They made unrealistic assumptions about how much the pension fund would increase from investments

This worked fine in the 1990's - a great bull market period

In the 2000's the stock market hasn't gone anywhere and real estate has dropped 50% from speculative bubble peaks, so pension funds are now in trouble

It's going to be painful getting out of this problem

Here's a progressive news article citing the same report that says Walker did indeed drum up a crisis.


http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/editorial/article_61064e9a-27b0-5f28-b6d1-a57c8b2aaaf6.html


Two opposing parties using the same "facts" to prove their point. Hmmmm, time for a read of this report myself.

http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lfb/Misc/2011_01_31Vos&Darling.pdf

Very confusing

On the bottom of page 1 it says

"Our analysis indicates that for the three-year period, aggregate, general fund tax collections will be $202.8 million lower than those reflected in the November/December reports. More than half of the lower estimate ($117.2 million) is due to the impact of Special Session Senate Bill 2 (health savings accounts), Assembly Bill 3 (tax deductions/credits for relocated businesses), and Assembly Bill 7 (tax exclusion for new employees)."

So, more than half of the deficit is caused by recent bills

Watch video #4. Its about 35 minutes long and has a lull after the first 15 minutes or so, but keep watching. Absolutely incredible.

http://www.wiseye.org/Programming/VideoArchive/EventDetail.aspx?evhdid=3759

Ben in canada, we also have free health care within our deficit.

you guys have one crazy hole to dig out of in the states. we can hand you guys bigger shovels if you want, snow shovels are quite big up here...

Edited by rcowman on 02/19/2011 23:09:38 MST.