If Wishes Were Horses: When are the Democrats planning on coming out with their own alternative state budget for people to consider?

A question posed on Facebook yesterday.

Wisconsin Library Association

Courtesy of Blumenfeld and Associates LLC

Unfortunately, an alternative state budget  is an exercise in wishful thinking.

According to state law, the Governor creates the budget in conjunction with the Department of Administration Secretary.  

The budget is then submitted to the legislature, whose current membership includes.....

• 18 Republicans and 15 Democrats in the Senate
• 60 Republicans and 39 Democrats in the Assembly

.....thus insuring that the current Republican Governor gets pretty much anything he wants.

As painful as it sounds, the best approach to the current budget process is to monitor and share the bad behavior of the majority of our legislators; encourage the minority (and unconvinced Republicans) to offer reasonable alternatives; and, eventually, i.e., on November 4, 2014, make legislators pay for the legislative program so destructive to Wisconsin they have enacted since January 2011.

Republicans increased their vote total by 24%.

Democrats increased their vote total by 60%.

No ebb tide in 2014.