Brookfield7: Public Hearing on Doyle's Budget, March 25th, State Fair Park

Want to weigh in on Governor Doyle's budget? You can.

My State Representative Leah Vukmir sent me the following notice:

The Joint Committee on Finance will hold a public hearing on Governor Doyle's Executive Budget
March 25, 2009, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm

State Fair Park, Banquet Room #2, 640 S. 84th Street, West Allis, WI 53214

For those who cannot attend but wish to register their opinion with the committee, we have set up a form where citizens can register their position. The information will be submitted at the hearing and will included in the official committee record.

You don’t have to live in the 14^th Assembly District to use the form. Comment Form

If you have not been following the budget, fellow blogger Randy Melchert highlighted some of the problems with the budget as being:

Anti-Taxpayer - Over $2.5 billion in new taxes including $95 million in capital gains taxes.

Anti-Life - No prohibitions against government facilities such as the Madison Surgery Center being used to directly provide 2nd trimester abortion

Anti-Gun - Thousands of convicted felons will be released and citizens will be unable to carry concealed weapons to protect themselves

Anti-School Choice - New regulations will further restrict choice schools and open the door to homeschool regulation

Anti-Family - The bill will create an unconstitutional domestic partner registry and mandate benefits

There are many other areas that Doyle funds that go against my grain: the unionization of home care workers comes to mind, as does funding rail. (I'll save those for a later post.)

But I am thinking about the spending right now. Doyle wants to increase the budget by $2.5 billion dollars! (That is $2,500 million dollars or $2,500,000,000.) His total budget is well over $62 billion dollars for a 2 year plan.

There are just a little over 5.6 million people in Wisconsin, living in about 2.25 million households. So Doyle is proposing increasing spending in our state by how much per household? Over $1,000.

The total per household cost to fund Doyle's budget is almost $27,900/household for 2 years or $13,950/year. Now, not all of that pool of money is funded through our state income tax, property tax, user fees, sales tax, gas tax revenues etc. Corporations and businesses pay in to fund the state budget too.

These figures should at least give you an idea of how out of control our state spending has become in proportion to the households in our state. If we further break down the spending by population, Doyle spends around $11,200 for every man, woman and child in our state in his budget or $5,600/person/year. I think that is a lot of money!

Be sure to come to the public hearing at State Fair Park or at least submit a comment form.

2009-2011 Executive Budget

Remember, The Wisconsin Tea Party Tax Rally is April 15th, 11:30 am on the steps of the Capitol in Madison. Register with mblock@afphq.org