Notes from the West Wing: Fiscal Misdirection
Posted on 14. Aug, 2009 by Garey Bies in News
Summer is coming to an end all too quickly but I hope everyone has had plenty of opportunities to spend time with friends and family in beautiful Northeast Wisconsin. But the end of summer is significant for another reason too: the effects of the new state budget are beginning to be felt.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been getting a lot of phone calls from members of local fire departments and emergency medical services regarding the new 911 tax the democrats included in their budget. The new tax levies a fee of 75 cents on every cell phone line or land line. The tax provision then establishes a new designated fund called “the police and fire protection fund” and stipulates that all revenues from this new tax be deposited in this fund.
While the decision by the Democrats to raise taxes in these difficult economic times was ill-advised, what makes the 911 tax worse is the fiscal misdirection they play with the revenues. You see, this new tax is not going to EMS, police, or fire departments. In the same budget provision that created this new tax and established this new fund, the Democrats then require that all revenues generated from the tax be withdrawn from the “police and fire protection fund” and deposited into the state general fund. Why? Because they needed more revenue to support ever-increasing state spending. Did I mention that this new tax is expected to cost Wisconsin taxpayers $102,600,000 over the two year budget?
This is just one example where the Democrats are robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Another prime example of this practice is the treatment of the Transportation Fund as Governor Doyle’s piggy bank. He transferred almost $66 million dollars of highway money to fund non-transportation programs in this current budget. Since 2003 Governor Doyle has raided the Transportation Fund to the tune of over 1.3 billion dollars, stealing money that should be used to strengthen our crumbling roadways.
The Transportation Fund is a segregated fund that is primarily utilized to pay for roadway creation and maintenance. The majority of the revenue for the fund is from the gas tax and vehicle registration fees. So when I go to the gas station and pay a 31 cent tax per gallon on my gasoline I am rightfully expecting it to go for highway maintenance and improvements, not for pork projects in Milwaukee and Madison.
But the bookkeeping only gets worse when you consider the state had to borrow close to a billion dollars to fill the hole created by the stolen funds. This is your household equivalent of over spending your savings on vacation and using your credit card to buy your house. You wouldn’t do that and your government shouldn’t be doing it either.
That is all for today’s update. As always, I can be reached by e-mail at Rep.Bies@legis.wisconsin.gov or by telephone, toll-free at 888.482.0001. You can also visit my website at http://www.legis.state.wi.us/assembly/asm01/news/.
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