Pro Tip: Don't Drink And Legislate

Jeff Simpson pointed out that during the bomb scare on Thursday, the state legislators went to a nearby bar and partook of adult beverages.  Maybe they were drinking to celebrate their irresponsible budgeting.  More likely, they were drinking heavily to make what they were about to do easier for them.

Either way, as this video of Representative Dale Kooyenga shows, drinking and legislating don't mix:



And is that Representative Joel Kleefisch in the background, picking his nose and eyeing up that table with bad intent?

Let's Debunk a Few Budget Myths

From State Senator Kathleen Vinehout:

"I’m okay with the cuts,” the man wrote me. “It’s shameful to pass debt on to our children.” In the man’s message, he implies a common misconception about Wisconsin – there is no state debt.

Wisconsin owes a lot of money and the state budget proposes we borrow even more money. The non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) reported in January that the state owed about $13.8 billion. This is slightly less than the previous year, but almost $600 million more than when Governor Doyle left office.

The conservative Tax Foundation reported in 2011 that Wisconsin ranked 18th of 50 states in terms of the worst state debt per person ($4,013). In 2013, Wisconsin ranked 16th of 50 states ($4,044 per person). Wisconsin is headed in the wrong direction in paying off the debt.

The Governor is proposing a great deal more borrowing in the new budget. Of greatest concern is the borrowing to pay for roads and bridges. The LFB estimates by the end of the coming budget almost a quarter of every dollar in transportation will be spent on debt payments.

Adding to future debt is the Governor’s proposal to build a stadium for the Milwaukee Bucks. The LFB estimates the interest alone on this proposal exceeds $400 million using the plan proposed by the Governor. Final payments are estimated to be in fiscal year 2046-47.

I’d say that’s passing debt on to our grandchildren.

Another common budget myth is the Governor paid all the debt bills coming due. The fact is the Governor is not paying about $108 million in debt payments coming due this year.

In order to free up cash, governors of both political stripes did not make debt payments. Governors Doyle and McCallum did not make debt payments during downturns in the economy. The largest delayed debt payments were under Governor Walker in the 2011-13 legislative session in which over $550 million in payments were delayed.

I imagine the reason the Governor delayed making debt payment this year was to free up cash to cover a deficit in the current budget; which brings us to another budget myth.

A popular myth is Governor Walker has spending under control. But spending in the current budget outpaced revenue.

In February of this year the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance analyzed three factors leading to an imbalance between revenue and spending.

“Tax cuts, the technical college aid jump, and soft tax collections led to revenues once again falling short of expenditures. The shortfall was $261 million last year and could grow to as large as $800 million this year, which would be the largest gap in over 20 years.”

These problems continue going forward. Using estimates released by the LFB last month, spending is estimated to outpace revenue in the next budget by over a billion in the first year and nearly $700 million in the second year.

The Legislature is required by the state Constitution to submit a balanced budget to the Governor. Therefore, when the budget passes in June, spending will be trimmed or revenues enhanced to deal with this imbalance.
Another common myth related to spending is that the Governor is spending less money in this new budget than in prior budgets.

The truth is the 2015-17 state budget spends $4.76 billion more than the last.

At $74.7 billion this budget is the largest in state history. That said, because of inflation, nearly every new budget is larger than the previous one.

But to say this budget is smaller than the last is false.

One reason the myth of a smaller budget exists is because some estimates of the size of the coming budget did not include all University of Wisconsin spending. Of course, to make an apples-to-apples comparison we need to include all the spending from the UW as we have in the past.

I hope this clears up a few of the common budget myths. If you want to learn more, please come to one of my budget town hall meetings

.

Assembly JFC Dems Stand Up For The Elderly And The Disabled

Last Friday, I, and scores of others, spoke to the Joint Finance Committee against Scott Walker's plan to privatize and decimate the long term support programs for the frail elderly and people with disabilities.

So it was with great pleasure to see that at least two committee members, Representatives Chris Taylor and Gordon Hintz, were not only listening to us, but are willing to fight for this.  The following is a joint press release from Taylor and Hintz:

Prior to the Joint Committee on Finance’s  (JFC) hearing in Rice Lake, the Democratic members of the JFC called for removal of budget provisions that would dismantle Wisconsin’s successful long-term care system.  Governor Walker’s proposal would replace it with a statewide model, likely run by out-of-state corporate insurance companies and without competitive bid requirements for contracts.  Following their request for removal of these changes, Representatives Gordon Hintz (D-Oshkosh) and Chris Taylor (D-Madison) released the following statement:

“The Republicans' dismantling of Wisconsin’s long term care system is throwing Wisconsin families into crisis,” Rep. Taylor said.  “Families served by Wisconsin’s long-term care system want to be treated with dignity and respect, and instead feel surprised and sabotaged.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.  Republicans need to take these changes out of the budget today.”

“Over the last week I have heard from hundreds of families that count on IRIS and FamilyCare for the support they need to be healthy and successful,” Rep. Hintz said.  “We are being asked to adopt a plan that has no details other than dismantling our existing long-term care system.  More than 50,000 Wisconsin families are served by our long-term care programs fear what this means for their loved ones.  This change has no business in the budget, and needs to be removed immediately to avoid any further harm and uncertainty."

Wisconsin’s current long-term care system has been a national model, based on years of trust, accountability, and work built by local stakeholder input. Currently, IRIS and Family Care allow people with a disability and the elderly to choose the type of in-home health services that best meet their needs, through regional providers or self-directed care. These changes were never discussed before they were introduced in the budget and have been met with strong opposition from families who were blindsided by the proposal.  DHS Secretary Rhoades has stated that she was also unaware of the proposal before it was included in the budget.

I thank and commend Representatives Taylor and Hintz for doing the right thing on this issue.

I just hope that their Republican counterparts realize that Walker has put them firmly on Wisconsin's version of the third rail and that they have the common sense to get off of it before it's too late for our state's most vulnerable citizens and for their own careers.

Scott Walker's Most Heinous Budget Stunt Yet

Under Medicaid guidelines, a disabled adult or a frail elderly person would need to go into a nursing home to be able to access Medicaid funding to pay for their care. However, each state has a waiver program that allows the person to divert that money into community-based support services that allows the person to remain in the community, if not in their own home.

In Wisconsin, there are three programs that offer this type of waiver. One is Family Care, which can provide such things as residential services, day programming and personal cares. Another is Partnership, which does the same thing as Family Care, but includes an HMO component for medical care. The third is IRIS, which allows the person to self-direct their services.

At least one of these programs is offered in 57 of the 72 counties in Wisconsin. Many of them have two options, Family Care and IRIS. Of the remaining 15 counties, eight of them are already in the process of transitioning to Family Care.

Until now.

In his 2015-17 proposed budget, Scott Walker wants to make sweeping changes to these programs and the way they are administered.

One of the biggest changes would be the elimination of IRIS. The effect of this will be devastating for a lot of these people and their families:

Beth Swedeen is the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities. She says one of the biggest concerns they are hearing about is the possible elimination of the Include, Respect, I Self Direct, or IRIS Program. IRIS allows qualifying people the ability to make their own choices about many healthcare options instead of being institutionalized, on Family Care, or regular Medicaid. “People with significant disabilities and older adults are using long-term care where they are self directing their own support, so they’re hiring their own care workers, and they’re making decisions about the budget that they are allowed to have in ways that make sense for them and their families, so we’re really concerned about that. I’ve gotten a lot of calls from folks who are really concerned about the elimination of that program.”

Swedeen says one of the many benefits of IRIS is the member gets to choose who their caregivers are. “When you have people in your home doing things that are very personal to you, like helping you with a bath or helping you get dressed, you want to make sure that’s a person you are comfortable with, and somebody that is safe and that is somebody you’ve chosen rather than somebody that an agency has chosen.”

Other changes include dissolving the regional districts and making Family Care contracts available only to companies that can operate state wide, such as Big Insurance companies. Walker would also allow the state to contract with anyone for for the Aging/Disability Resource Centers (ADRCs), which are currently run by the counties. Walker would also abolish ADRC governing boards and long term care councils.

Walker would also award all of these contracts in a no bid process.
And to show that the care of these vulnerable adults are not his priority, Walker wants to take oversight of these programs from the Department of Health Services and give it to the Commissioner of Insurance.

In other words, Walker wants to force the frail elderly and disabled adults into a single, expensive program. He then wants to give these contracts - worth more than $3 billion - in a no bid process to large for profit insurance companies, who will have little or no oversight.

Gee, do you think he is fishing for the Big Insurance campaign donations with this immoral giveaway?

Ah, but that's not all. With all things Walker, there is more. There is always more.

Walker is not satisfied with just going after the disabled adults and frail elderly. He wants to go after disabled children as well.

Included in Walker's budget is the elimination of the Family Support Program, which helps families with disabled children to get special equipment or services that are not covered under Medicaid.

Just when one might think that Walker has hit the depths of maleficence and greed, he finds a way to prove us wrong.

Walker and his apologists will point out that his budget calls for expanding Family Care to all 72 counties so that no disabled person or frail elderly person would go without these "services."

Don't be fooled by this claim.

The only reason Walker is doing that is that the federal government slammed him a few years ago when he tried to put a cap on Family Care and told him in no uncertain terms that he could not deny services to anyone eligible for them:

Because the currently approved waiver includes and entitlement to waiver services, we are instructing the State to operate the waiver as it was approved by CMS. Therefore, we are directing the State to identify any individuals not currently enrolled onto the Family Care or Self-Directed Supports waivers since the July 1, 2011 implementation of the newly instituted enrollment caps, and immediately enroll those individuals in the waiver programs. This includes individuals living in any counties who had or would have had an entitlement to the waivers as of July 1, 2011, and includes individuals who were or would have otherwise been selected for enrollment from other participating counties.

In ancient history, people would put their frail and disabled people out into the cold for the wolves. Walker is doing a modern day version of this where he is throwing these vulnerable citizens to the corporate wolves.

Governor's Groundhog Day Budget

The following summary of Scott Walker's budget is from Senator Chris Larson's newsletter and replicated here with his permission:

Last week, the governor announced his budget, which will cover the 2015-2017 biennium. People across Wisconsin tuned in hoping to hear the governor describe his plan for rebuilding Wisconsin, after the harm done by the last two budgets. Unfortunately, there was no long-term, sustainable vision conveyed.

Understanding How Wisconsin Got Here

The 2011-2013 Biennial Budget not only divided Wisconsin and damaged the building blocks of our middle-class, but it also caused Wisconsin to be ranked 42nd in the nation for job growth and is dead last in the Midwest. Below are just some of the staggering cuts that were seen in the previous budget in order to provide $2.3 billion in special interest giveaways:

• $1.6 billion cut from public schools, which was the largest education cut in Wisconsin history
• $315 million cut from our UW System, which has campuses across the state to educate future workers
• $72 million cut from our tech colleges, which are responsible for training the workers our local businesses are demanding

The 2013-2015 state budget continued Walker's pattern of creating budgets that are unsustainable, fail families on education and health care, and don't do anything to represent middle class values. In that budget, the governor expanded the unaccountable, unproven voucher system statewide, while at the same time also choosing to expand the per pupil budget for voucher schools by at least 9% for K-8 students and 22% for high school students. The governor also rejected funding from the federal government to increase health care access to thousands of people, by rejecting the federal Medicaid expansion money. This choice not only costs taxpayers more to cover fewer people, but it also turned away an estimated 10,500 net new jobs.

So how bad is the 2015-2017 budget?

What we heard from Governor Walker last week confirmed what we expected to hear: simply put, this is a Groundhog Day budget -- a repeat of two years ago. Once again, the governor lacks any long-term vision for Wisconsin -- he is ignoring Wisconsin's middle class families and students, in favor of special interest giveaways and unsustainable tax cuts for the wealthy. He is once again dividing our state into winners and losers by gutting $300 million from our UW System, while at the same time increasing spending on big highway and interstate projects, and borrowing an additional $1.5 billion to do it.

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, he does nothing to address the more than $500 million Values Deficit he created when he made the largest cuts to public education in our state's history just a few years ago. At the same time he continues to allow more private, for-profit voucher schools to operate by expanding the voucher system statewide. To make matters worse, he directly attacks hardworking families, who are already struggling to get by in the Walker economy, by throwing up illegal road blocks for families in need of access to BadgerCare or FoodShare until they can get back on their feet.

Here is a breakdown of a couple of key issue areas of the budget, starting with ten things you may not know about Walker's proposed education budget:

1. It removes the cap on the unaccountable voucher program, allowing for unlimited enrollment statewide
2. It spends 17.2 million more of our tax dollars for the voucher program
3. It cuts per student funding by $126.9 million
4. It also creates a Charter School Authorizing Board, which will further privatize education and take resources from our traditional neighborhood schools
5. It cuts almost $90 million in funding for students with special needs
6. It allows voucher schools to take different tests than public schools to compare performance, creating an apples-to-oranges comparison
7. It mandates DPI assign schools with letter grades in both school and district report cards
8. It effectively bans Common Core Standards for WI
9. It permits people with no background in education, and no proven skills they can adequately teach our kids, to become licensed teachers
10. It cuts funding for school breakfast, school libraries, SAGE, grants for gifted and talented students, and school violence prevention programs

As mentioned earlier, the governor cuts $300 million from the UW System budget. This will have a huge impact on what was viewed nationally as a world class University System, and will negatively impact the education our kids will receive. Here is a table that outlines the cuts per campus:

Governor Walker's budget also makes significant changes to policies that that will greatly impact the condition of our shared lands and waters and the way we leave it for future generations.

If you care about our public land and water here are ten things you may not have heard about in Walker's budget:

1. It kills the Wisconsin Knowles-Nelson Stewardship fund, rejecting investment in saving wild areas for public recreation and future generations
2. It guts citizen guidance of the DNR, by stripping the authority of the citizen-led Natural Resources Board
3. It cuts over 65 DNR staff positions vital to safeguarding our land and waters
4. It slashes investments to programs that protect our water, land, and forests
5. It eliminates public funding for our state park staff
6. It increases fees for entering and camping in our state parks
7. It shatters partnerships with groups and organizations who work to preserve and enhance conservation
8. It cuts DNR forestry staff, in favor of privatization and out-sourcing
9. It cuts millions from recycling grants, jeopardizing programs and efforts.
10. It stops the PECFA program, cutting clean-up of contamination sites

Finally, If you care about the health of Wisconsin's working families and seniors, this budget makes significant cuts and changes to programs that have been models used around the nation, because of their innovation in helping Wisconsinites and because of the quality of care they produce at a low cost to the individual and state.

Here is a list of ten changes in Walker's budget that will hurt Wisconsin’s working families and seniors:

1. It makes low-income adults, who are already struggling to get by, pay even more for BadgerCare coverage
2. It limits access to basic health care services to 48 months
3. It slashes SeniorCare funding by almost $97 million
4. It pushes seniors out of the SeniorCare program
5. It eliminates IRIS, a program for people with disabilities
6. It limits participation in the Wisconsin Works program from 60 months to 48 months
7. It allows for removal of people from Wisconsin Works without notice or reason
8. It privatizes the Family Care program and puts the integrity of the program in jeopardy
9. It makes it easier for the state to take a widow's money through estate taxes
10. It doesn't accept federal Medicaid money to cover more people under BadgerCare for less money The aforementioned health care cuts could be avoided by expanding BadgerCare, which would save the state around $300 million between January 2016 and June 2017

In this budget, Governor Walker makes it clear that he is more distracted by his own ambitions of appealing to Tea Party voters in other states, than articulating a long-term vision of hope for Wisconsin, which should start by cleaning up the mess he has already made over the past four years.

Instead, Walker's Groundhog Day budget once again doubles down on failed schemes and perpetuates a values deficit by choosing campaigns over classrooms, highways over high schools, and borrowing over Bucky. This budget does not reflect the priorities and values of the people of Wisconsin, period.

As I continue to dig through the budget, I will make sure to update you on other provisions and concerns as they arise. If what we have seen at first glimpse is any indication of things to come, I imagine I will have much more to share with you in the coming weeks and months.

Governor Walker's proposed 2015-17 state budget was introduced as Senate Bill 21 (SB) 21 on February 3, 2015, and was referred to the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee (JFC). Since being introduced, there have been strong, bipartisan criticisms expressed over portions of the governor's budget. I will ensure the views of our neighbors are considered as the state budget makes its way to the Wisconsin State Senate for a vote.

Additionally, JFC will be holding public hearings as they review the budget, and will make changes over the coming months, before approving a final version to be voted on by the full Legislature, which typically occurs in June. I am strongly advocating for having one of these committee hearings in the Milwaukee area, so the voices and concerns of our neighbors can be heard. I will be sure to keep you updated as details become available.