Real Politics; 107

I just think it's bad bad bad public policy. I mean, Go back home and talk to your people and I've talk to a lot of them in the last week because I thought maybe I was missing something maybe the governor was really right on the money, you know and I thought why I better go back and I started asking people about this place and literally going out of my way to talk about what do you think about building roads. And people look at you like you're you know crazy. They really do, you know. They say what? You know. Can't get gas the gas station you want to build, you know? I don't know. I don't know maybe maybe the people out there are wiser than we. Surely I think they're wiser than the governor. Without objection the clerk will call the roll. Senators Adelman, Bablitch, Bear, Berger, Bidwell, brown. Hello I'm John Paul. Making a political decisions is hardly ever a simple matter of yes or no especially when the stakes are billions of taxpayer dollars. A political decision is also a fragile thing as tenuous as it is complex.

Agreements, bargains, and compromises can come apart at the seams at the very last minute and often do. In this edition of real politics will witness the final act we hope in the saga of the state budget bill. After months of arm twisting niggling haggling pleading bellowing posturing caucusing and debating the legislature finally passed a 12.1 billion dollar state budget. Last night the budget was stalled by Senate Democrats. Today it got a jump start and after a few back fires started moving again. We have reports from Jeff Clark in the Senate and Richard Wexler in the Assembly. We'll start with Senate action. Last night when Senate Democrats adjourned their caucus the budget was in limbo. When they returned to that caucus this morning it was evident the night off had done some good. Some might think it was a night of rest but more than likely it was a night of negotiating lobbying and arm twisting. The Senate met briefly before the Democrats caucused. During that brief session Senate minority leader Clifford Krueger of Merrill issued a warning to the majority party

not to let this budget get out of hand. Krueger cautioned Senate Democrats that to do so would mean sending the bill to conference committee were only a handful of legislators would shape the final document. Then the Senate broke to caucus and at that caucus Senator David Berger of Milwaukee issued another type of warning. Before we get going... I just wanted to cover a little bit of history for everybody and that was in the 71 session [unclear] a baseball analogy. I think that's a real good thing. We played hardball with the new governor at that time too. We played hardball to the point where we had at least 3 marathon all night sessions in the assembly. And I forget how many in the Senate managed to have and one morning we woke up and it was October 28th and the budget got passed and here was this umpire by the name of Pat Lucey and all of a sudden I realized he had the bats, the bases the pitcher's mound, chalk lines, the grass,

the stadium, and the balls. [laughing] [laughing] Senator Cullen reminded me he also ended up collecting all the water boys at the end too. After Berger's history lesson the caucus got word from its leaders about overnight negotiations with Governor Dreyfus. The word was no more deals no more concessions no movement on the governor's part to appease Senate Democrats. But the report did indicate the governor would use pet issues in both houses to negotiate on items he plans to line veto. Then the transportation package was put before the caucus and it was a time for talk about bottom lines alternatives to accepting the highway deal and repercussions of caucus action. [Fred Risser] For the life of me I can't understand the concern of some of you as to an overall veto. The [unclear] should be to the whole document [unclear] we come back here and in one day we put the thing back together again. We would put in about what we in got now maybe

to do with slight adjustments and we'd put it on his desk again but I don't think we should vote for or against 8 billion dollars on the basis of whether or not he's going to veto the whole document. That's my only point. I have strong philosophical opinions against covering the ground with concrete and and so I'll make no my decision on that point. I may vote for the budget whether you put in the concrete or not but the point is the question the Bill is posing to do we want 8 million dollars more concrete and I just don't think that the decision should be based on whether or not the government threats to veto the whole [unclear]. That's all Im saying I think all you have to do is look at what the alternatives are first of all in terms of gathering the necessary votes in this body for passage of that budget we're not going to pick up Republican senators without that thing. You're not going to... You may or may not win the battle with the Assembly. They've already approved the 8 million dollars transfer overwhelmingly. And in fact if we end up with a veto of the entire budget I suspect the governor well knows

how to develop a budget that would be much more appealing politically appealing maybe not much better public policy but much more politically appealing than the one that he has now. If I were the governor I would be aching to have a chance to submit a second budget. I just think its bad bad bad public policy. I mean go back home and talk to your people and I've. talked to a lot of them last week I thought maybe I was missing something maybe the governor was really right on the money you know and I thought well I better go back and I started asking people about this question literally going out of my way to talk about what do you think about building roads. And. People look at you like you're you know crazy you know. They really feel that they say what? You know. Can't get gas at the gas station and you want to build you know. I don't know maybe maybe the people out there are wiser than we. I certainly I think they're wiser than the governor. I'm really ticked off that the assembly would reduce the SSI program that we put in and then turn around put 8 million dollars back in here again in terms of growth 8 million

additional dollars. I mentioned before and I don't know what you know what Democrats [unclear]. Maybe I'll have to not pay my dues next year to the Democratic party either. I don't know. But I think it oughta be pretty clear to the Assembly that if we go along with this transportation package in here then it is because not because of what they have and how they have treated some of the programs we send over there but because it says you mention this we have to do this to get a budget. I think that was the biggest tinkering job the biggest mistake that the Assembly could have made. With the debate on this amendment over the caucus was forced to vote on the 8 million more for highways. Result was a 15 to 6 vote to give Dreyfuss the additional highway money. This vote signaled that Senate Democrats had seen the political light and the budget was on the way out of the caucus and headed for the Senate floor. We do have agreement within our caucus that includes the 8 million dollars that the governor wanted. It essentially incorporates all the transportation features that the assembly had adopted.

The major portion is to put SSI back to 13 million where we've always all of us in this house felt that it should have been in the first place. But it is now our intention to not take any final votes on this package until we are sure that the assembly is going to concur with the agreements that we have reached because we did do some tinkering some fine tuning with the assembly doc- assembly document as it came over to us. And so it was our belief that we should make sure that we've got agreement from the assembly and sufficient votes over there before we would release our budget to vote on it here in this chamber and then message it over to the assembly After the Senate adjourned it was the assembly's turn in caucus to look over the changes and as Richard Wexler reports the assembly was getting anxious to see how the Senate had dealt with their budget. The Senate Democrats have been fighting two parallel sometimes overlapping battles. One was with the governor over the highway compromise. The other was with assembly

Democrats over some of the hundreds of changes they made in the Senate's version of the budget. I think it would have been out of character for the Senate to simply take this and rubber stamp it and ship it back to us and say well assembly you did a wonderful job. I think that they they guard their prerogatives as a deliberative body very carefully and they are now in the process of assuring themselves that this is what they want to vote for and making some changes and you must remember that we did make at least a couple of changes in things that they felt strongly about the SSI cutting the SSI from 13.1 to 5.8 point eight is an important item. And we can't say that we didn't do some violence to their package because we did. And that will probably be restored. By and large it wasn't the big changes which got the assembly Democrats upset. Rather they were angered when the senators started to remove a series of pet projects of no great interest to the state as a whole but of critical importance to individual assembly Democrats.

Things like 2 million dollars in snow removal aid for localities. Some of these pet projects had to be tacked on to the budget last week in order to get enough assembly Democrats to support it. That is a problem in our house and my people will get continually more rebellious as the day goes on and angry. They want to go home they feel like they've done their job. They feel like they didn't they didn't touch a lot of the Senate's smaller interests and projects. And there is a lot of resentment over here when the Senate starts uh starts fooling around with some of the things that that the representatives feel strongly about. Small things. You think that resentment is justified. Yes I do. I think you know if there is a place where the where the quid pro quo has broken down it might be on the on the small items. And so the assembly Democratic leadership went over to the Senate to negotiate. By the time they were through they had gotten back most of the little items they wanted. At

about 2 o'clock this afternoon Senator Bablich came to a mid afternoon caucus of assembly Democrats and told them about the concessions the Senate had made. About 11:30 this morning it became clear that we were very very close to agreement and yet certainly with all of your input to all of our members it became clear that the agreement that we were going to reach in our caucus was not going to be worth a great deal unless we re-examined and fine-tuned a little bit of the work that we had done over the past 24 hours as I'm sure all of you I was certainly confident our caucus would do. We have very reasonable people over in our caucus. And so we sat down and began to rethink some of these issues and we decided that maybe we had acted a bit hastily and in some areas. For instance we decided that Dis Vector really did need that community development assistance program but maybe didn't quite need the entire 13.5 million dollars. And [unclear] was in our caucus and he agreed that the concept was really the important thing so we went 50 percent. About

7 million dollars for community development assistance. We put it back in and we put back in his concept. Jim Rooney Jim Rooney convinced us that more snow had fallen in Racine than we had actually originally thought. And a number of other people felt that this was a pretty vital item also. And so actually the the original vote on snow removal assistance was very very close on our caucus and so Senator Flynn did his work too and that has been put back in. I think this caucus should be able to live with the final changes that have been made by the by the Senate. There are going to be some people that are somewhat disappointed. But on the whole most of the changes made by the Senate today are about to be placed in the bill are amendments to our amendments and I do not think they do a lot of damage. Only one item provokes serious objections from the caucus. A cut of 6 million dollars in

bonding authority for the University of Wisconsin. It just strikes me that if the Senate believes that 6 million dollars ought to be cut that the building program is too high in a period of declining enrollments when most of these are not in any way manner or form related to declining enrollment. But they ought to identify which buildings are going to go. When it came to cutting the building program essentially we felt that we were consistent with what our philosophical approach was to itemization. We felt and I don't say this to stroke you but I think it's true that there has to be a certain degree of confidence in the building commission to essentially identify and prioritize the items because they are in a much better position to do that then we as a legislature. By a vote of 55 to 3 the assembly Democrats agreed to support the budget as reworked by the Senate.

The budget finally came to the Senate floor about 5 o'clock today. Some Republican amendments were introduced and tabled. Then the whole we've all been waiting for was ready to be taken. Adoption of assembly amendments 444 and 445 concurrence with the assembly's version of the budget. The stage was set for the final time and the roll was called and one morning we woke up and it was October 28th and the budget got passed and there was this umpire by the name of Pat Lucey and all of a sudden I realized he had the bats the bases, the pitcher's mound the chalk lines, the grass, the stadium and the balls [laughter] Senator Cohen reminded me also, he ended up collecting all the water boys at the end