Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Did Fitz just give away a secret?

Just got time for a quick note before we take advantage of Madison Restuarant Week and hit the El Dorado Grill. I couldn't help but notice this exchange from the state Senate, via wispolitics.com
Fitzgerald then challenged the Dem senators considering a run for guv to use the chamber floor to launch their campaigns and lay out what they plan to do

"I'll tell you what I think you're going to do. You’re going to raise taxes," Fitzgerald said. "If you think this budget was scary, wait until the next one." (emphasis mine)

Fitzgerald said he hopes Legislative Fiscal Bureau Director Bob Lang will tell lawmakers within the next few weeks that somehow income and sales tax collection have grown compared to a year ago.

"But I'm not optimistic because that's where the national economy is," Fitzgerald said. "I'm not sure what happened in December, but I hope retail sales will change that."
Hmmm, seems to me that Fitz just admitted that the Walker/ WisGOP budget really isn't balanced, and that we're looking at quite the deficit for the next 2 years.

Oh yeah, the Walker people admitted it themselves to the Obama Administration last month, when they said we had a GAAP deficit of $2.99 billion this year and $3.02 billion next year. At the same, Walker was running around the country and polluting airwaves with ads that said the budget was "balanced" without raising taxes (neither of which is clearly true). Of course, the GAAP deficit was brought up to the Feds because the Walker boys were trying to drop tens of thousands off of Badger Care, so in typical Walker Admin. fashion, but they couldn't do so unless they actually had a deficit necessitating the cuts. In other words, Walker and WisGOP are fudging numbers whenever it seemed to get whatever idological goal they wanted accomplished.

So Fitz's little outburst has let the cat out of the bag in full view- the Walker budget was filled with one-time gimmicks and rosy scenarios that were not going to come close to balancing the budget in 2013-2015 in real life. And given the huge job losses and funny money the current budget had, this one isn't going to be balanced when Lang and the LFB release their numbers this week.

And the last lie that Walker can cling to will go down in flames. Fitz's little outburst should be all over Dem ads for the next few months...including against Fitz himself.

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