When the new Wisconsin 2007-09 State Budget was finally enacted by Gov. Doyle on October 26, 2007, we assumed it was a relatively clean, state budget. However, if our friends at the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance (WTA) are correct, and we have every reason to believe they are, then the new state budget is, in fact, anything but clean. Apparently, a number of state lawmakers were more interested in funding pet projects among their respective constituencies than they were in passing an efficient budget in the best interests of the entire state.

Why do pet projects, earmarked spending and targeted mandates in the state budget concern us? Friends, who is going to pay for these unnecessary, and quite possibly illegal, budget provisions? You know the answer as well as I do…you and I will pay for them. While legislators attempt to appease their constituents with state dollars, our families will carry the additional tax burden.

As the tax burden in Wisconsin steadily increases, it is weakening Wisconsin’s best natural resource—the family. Financial stress is one of the foremost causes of friction in marriages and families. Far too frequently, both parents are forced to work in order to pay the bills. While both their parents work demanding jobs with long hours, children are brought up by day care workers and school teachers. Educational choices for the children become more limited. In these situations, families delay or avoid major purchases and don’t typically save or invest for their future. The truth is, t he totality of the tax burden weakens Wisconsin socially and economically because it weakens Wisconsin’s best economic producing unit we have: the family.

WTA’s information leads us to believe that the state legislature, along with Governor Doyle, may have violated the Wisconsin constitution and state statues by passing and enacting the 2007-09 state budget. Article IV, sec. 18 of the Wisconsin constitution states that, “No private or local bill which may be passed by the legislature shall embrace more than one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title.” In other words, as the state budget, the budget is supposed to address and fund statewide concerns, not pet projects.

Section 13.05 of the Wisconsin statutes prohibits “logrolling” and fines legislators who give, offer or promise to give their vote to a piece of legislation on the condition that another legislator will do the same for another piece of legislation. Basically, the statute prohibits legislators from trading votes in order to gain support for their projects/legislation.

However, that appears to be exactly what might have happened with the state budget. Consider that the new state budget granted authorization to move/relocate a business sign in Kenosha Co., regardless of state or local regulations, awarded $40,000 in one-time grants to Lake Superior Big Top Chautaqua in Bayfield, Ko Thi Dance Co. and the African-American Children’s Theater in Milwaukee, gave sales tax exemptions for biomass for fuel and clay pigeons, and awarded a $25,000 “neighborhood improvement” grant to Oshkosh.

Some of the “pet project” amendments were never even a part of the original budget and were most likely inserted into the compromise budget in order to appease legislators and constituents.

Over twenty years ago, President Ronald Reagan issued an Executive Order regarding family policy. The order stipulated, among other things, that the federal executive branch had to consider a policy in light of its impact on the family before the department could implement that policy. For example, Reagan’s order asked, “Does this particular executive action strengthen or erode family and marriage, the authority and rights of parents, family budgets and the functions of the family unit?”

Wisconsin ’s legislators should have asked these types of questions when they approved the new state budget. Instead, they are threatening the financial stability of Wisconsin’s best natural resource—her traditional families—by unnecessary and perhaps even illegal taxing and spending. Wisconsin citizens play a role in all of this: we have the responsibility to elect people of integrity to the legislature and to hold them accountable to the law and to the best interests of Wisconsin’s families.

For Wisconsin Family Council, I’m Julaine Appling, reminding you the Prophet Hosea said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.