- A first look tonight at the final flurry of the legislature
working in tandem to pass the $76 billion state budget
and the $3 billion Foxconn deal this week.
Even as four Republican senators held out on voting
in favor of the budget, with three of them making demands,
right down to the wire.
[Roll call vote]
- The state senate went in today on the budget,
even with its majority leader
not sure late into the week that he had the votes to pass it.
Three Republican senators were demanding changes
in return for their votes.
Changes including raising the income limit for school choice
and banning the UW from spending money on diversity training.
- To root out every area of waste and abuse.
- That angered the Assembly Speaker,
who did not want to make substantive changes
at the last minute.
- Wholesale changes where somebody says
"I've got all kinds of things throughout the process
and now I want one more thing to vote yes."
That's not how our process works.
And we're not going to be held hostage to individuals
who have some kind of a wish list that they want
after the process has continued.
- The Assembly this week
passed the state budget on a 57-39 vote,
with five Republicans voting no
along with all Democrats.
Minority Leader Peter Barca bemoaned the document
for failing to find a funding source for roads and highways.
- You can ask the various people
that are involved in this industry.
And every one of them will tell you
that this is an absolute catastrophe.
That the delays are going to be enormous.
It's going to hurt rural districts
and rural places around the state that are already beginning
to turn some of their asphalt roads into gravel.
- You will not hear me say this again today,
but the Democrats have a point.
We have tried as hard as we could
to find a solution for transportation.
Now, we have taken a step backwards to say
this budget today ensures that
the problem does not get worse under our watch.
- Now, the Assembly and Senate passed the $3 billion Foxconn
incentive package and it awaits the governor's signature.
Now the remaining work lies with the senate
which is on the floor right now
after some drama and deal-making today over whether
the majority leader had the votes to pass the budget.
WPR's Capitol Bureau Chief Shawn Johnson
is just outside the chambers tonight.
Thanks for joining us.
- Hi Frederica.
- Any idea whether those holdouts will in fact
vote in the affirmative on this budget?
- So they've said that they would.
You had three Republican senators--
actually four Republican senators--
going into today saying that they were no votes.
We've now heard from three of them or from their offices
that they will vote for this budget.
Those senators were Steve Nass, Chris Kapenga and Duey Stroebel.
And they came to that conclusion
that they were going to be yes votes
after a discussion with the governor this morning
via phone while the governor was in South Korea.
- So how did the Republican leader
and the governor get those holdouts to this yes vote?
Any ideas?
- We don't know the specifics of that yet.
They've said that they're going to announce those details
after the budget vote.
So we've got a situation tonight where about 17 amendments
are going to be discussed in the Senate tonight.
They won't pass.
There will be changes made to the budget that we know.
But they're going to come after this is all said and done.
So we're going to hear about those details later.
But we know that the governor made some type of veto
assurances to these Republican senators that made them
feel comfortable enough that they could support the plan.
- So how unusual is all of this?
To have the majority go this close over a major bill
like the budget and all of this right at the last moment?
In the midst of it?
- So it's not unusual for a budget
to go up to the last minute.
It's just kind of when
they decide the last minute is going to be.
If you look at the big picture here,
Republicans have their largest majorities in the capitol
in decades.
And so for them to be two and a half months past deadline,
that in and of itself is unusual.
The way they're wrapping up is a bit unusual.
You don't usually hear veto assurances
discussed that morning in kind of a public way.
And then the details of those veto assurances
not come out until later that night.
So there are a lot of elements of this
that are not your typical budget.
But the fact that they're going up to the last minute
as they kind of set that clock, that's pretty typical.
- Now, take us through what the budget does and doesn't do.
- So, I mean, big picture, it's a $76 billion state budget
when you take state money and federal money.
The governor's big highlight he talks about at nearly every stop
when he talks about this budget is the increased school funding.
The $639 million worth of increased funding
for K-12 public schools.
It would phase out a property tax.
Reduce property taxes on businesses
and so those are kind of the high points for Republicans.
For Democrats there's been a lot of talk
about that education increase being too little too late.
They've really kind of sought to contrast what's in this budget
and what could have been in the budget with what Republicans
approved earlier this week,
which was a $3 billion incentive package for Foxconn
that came before the budget vote.
- I thought it was curious that the Assembly Speaker said
he would not vote again on this budget
to appease senate Republicans,
but if there are changes
he wouldn't have a choice, would he?
- You would have had a pretty big game of chicken at
that point because you had the Assembly basically saying,
"We're not going to do--
we're not going to take up what you're voting on."
You would have had the Senate saying, "So what.
You're going to have to. We passed it."
They would have been at a standstill at that point.
So they've avoided that this time.
You're not going to get to see that game of chicken.
It looks like we're going to have budget tonight.
- Shawn Johnson, thanks very much for joining us
and don't stay too late.
- You're welcome.