Time for some new ideas

By Jason Kohout | July 1, 2009

The state budget was bad. And that is the Democrats’ problem. There is no doubt that our side needs to be yelling about how bad the budget really is, especially for business (as we today see that Briggs and Stratton is moving jobs away from Wisconsin and to states with more friendly business climates).

I would give it about a month. But after that, I hope that our side starts thinking up some new, fresh policy ideas. Paul Ryan is doing it; we have the impetus of a gubernatorial race to do it on the state level. We also have a new think-tank in the MacIver Institute to compliment the WPRI.

One place to start is that state legislators and the governor have been all too often willing to flaunt the law that the state must have a balanced budget and instead raid segregated funds and use bonding as a way to push paying for spending into the future. I think the real problem with the recently passed budget is that while it unnecessarily increases spending, it pushes the taxes to be levied into the future. Republicans would do well to find a concrete policy that they can push that would force budget-writers to make all of the hard decisions now.

Another issue to fundamentally look at how we fund and make decisions about schools. It is foolishness to think that those two things do not go hand-in-hand. I firmly believe in local control of school districts. But it is pretty clear that the system that we have now: school districts have the ability to spend money (but now, without the QEO, have most of their costs imposed by unions or state policies that rewards unions) and the state taxes for 60% of it will not survive. As state money has funded schools, the state has taken more control over the schools. But it has done so haphazardly and the legislature and DPI have shown that they are not up to the task.

And the problems to tackle in tax policy! Our current tax credits are good marketing ploys and make good sound bites, but they are (1) meagre, (2) complicated, and (3) allow the government to choose winners and losers. They are not good tax policy (yeah, we can get the tax lawyer vote). Christian blogs about the Public Enemies debacle. http://www.wpri.org/blog/?p=851

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