In This Issue:
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1. I'm Not Big Oil
2. Doyle's Tightrope
3. Circling the Wagons
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I'm Not Big Oil
 As the state reports record job losses and double digit unemployment in a dozen Wisconsin cities, the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee held public hearings around the state to get input on Governor’s Doyle’s proposed budget.
Groups of local convenience store operators have been turning out to protest the Governor’s so called, “Oil Company Franchise Fee, while two separate organizations have hit the airwaves to advocate against the tax. Reports have shown that Doyle’s new tax could add up to seven cents per gallon to the cost of gas in Wisconsin.
Clad in red shirts that read, “I am not Big Oil,” local convenience store owners are showing legislators that the nameless, faceless “big oil” they wish to soak, are really just a bunch of small business people trying to staying afloat in the middle of a recession. According to Wispolitics:
Kwik Trip employee Bob Josephson led the battle cry today against the so-called oil profits tax, saying the proposal from Gov. Doyle will dramatically increase the cost of supplying gas in Wisconsin.
About 25 red-shirted people stood behind Josephson. The issue has been a big draw to the committee's public hearings this session, bringing in nearly the numbers as the perennial smoking cessation issue.
Josephson said many of the convenience stores in Wisconsin are family-owned, and they are the ones that will bear the cost of the tax, not "big oil" companies.
"We all know this tax will ultimately be paid by Wisconsin business and passed on to Wisconsin residents," Josephson said.
Doyle says the new gas tax is needed to replenish the state’s segregated transportation fund, a fund Doyle destroyed by repeatedly transferring revenue to other programs, signing a bill to eliminate automatic gas tax indexing, and excessive bonding to keep transportation spending high.
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Doyle's Tightrope
The new gas tax is one of dozens of provisions in the Governor’s budget that will further damage the state’s economy.
This budget, along with the “stimulus” bill Doyle signed in February, raises taxes by $3 billion – sucking money out of the economy that could be used to create new jobs.
The Governor claims higher taxes are necessary for economic recovery, but Christian Schneider at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute explores the disconnect between what Doyle says and what he does. Schneider says Doyle's tighrope act begs a series of questions:
Why the governor believes more state spending is the key to economic “stimulus” within the state – when he has increased total state government spending by 32% since he took office, and it “stimulated” Wisconsin into the fourth worst budget deficit in the United States. Perhaps his proposed $3 billion in new taxes can catapult us to number one.
How the state can be in the grips of a historic economic downturn, yet his budget expects general fund tax revenue growth of 2.5% in Fiscal Year 2010 and 4.1% in 2011. Even in the comparatively mild recession of 2001, it took the state three years to see any real revenue growth.
How the state’s $5.9 billion deficit is entirely the fault of George W. Bush, even though Doyle has been governor for seven years and introduced four biennial budgets – each of which has left the state with enormous structural deficits.
How it is he can say the state is suffering through “the largest cuts we’ve ever seen” in his 2009-11 budget, while spending increases nearly 10% over the previous budget. In his budget speech, Doyle says his spending plan entails some “hard decisions” – yet it appears the only tough decision he will face is what kind of flower arrangement he’ll send President Obama in exchange for the $4.5 billion in federal money Wisconsin will get to allow it to spend billions more, while pretending to “cut” $5.9 billion.
How he can criticize state budgets in the 1990s for “expensive new programs,” the “excessive use of one-time money,” and “runaway deficits,” when each of his budgets has seen a dramatic escalation in expensive new programs, the excessive use of one-time money, and runaway deficits.
How Doyle can say his budgets are “for the middle class – and those trying to get there,” when they have included hundreds of millions of dollars in regressive taxes that harm the lower class disproportionately. On top of that, Doyle has balanced his budgets by issuing debt to fund ongoing expenditures – debt bought by wealthy financiers, whose pockets regular taxpayers must stuff for 20 years or more, in exchange for one year of state spending.
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Lawyers Circle the Wagons
 During the last budget, Governor Doyle provided a million dollar grant to subsidize pro- bono legal work. In response, State Representative Frank Lasee recommended eliminating state subsidies for the UW-Madison Law School.
”When you have more lawyers than doctors in America and limited tax dollars, I don't see why we would be supporting taxpayers subsidizing the creation of more of them," he said.
The proposal may have been far-fetched, but the faculty at the UW Law School took it very seriously.
This week the Law School introduced a report saying that excessive litigation isn’t really a problem in Wisconsin. The past few years have illustrated that the trial bar will go to great lengths to protect their turf. So it should surprise no one that the law school’s study claims there aren’t enough lawsuits in Wisconsin, since it’s in their best interest to have as much litigation as possible. According to the Capital Times, “the authors believe this report is the first "neutral and objective account of any state's civil justice system.”
Of course the authors are neutral and objective, and the fact that Susan Steingass is a partner at the state’s top personal injury law firm, and Marc Galanter serves on the board of the left wing Center for Justice Democracy, should not convince you otherwise.
Nor should you view this report as just another gratuitous shot at the state’s Chamber of Commerce, WMC, in retaliation for their efforts to fight legislation that will turn Wisconsin into a haven for trial lawyers. Finally the timing of the report has absolutely nothing to do with the Supreme Court election and WMC’s participation in the last two court races. The University of Wisconsin would never exploit state resources that way.
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