the next election than what's right for the people
of our state. Of those who voted no, many didn't care
for the fact the package was hatched by leaders not
running for reelection and a lame duck governor also
not running. The bill saw bipartisan passage in the
state Assembly, with ten Dems voting in favor, along
with all Republicans, among them Republican
Representative Toni Kurz of Wonewoc, vice chair of the
Joint Finance Committee. He joins us now. And thanks a
lot for being here. >> Oh my pleasure. Thank
you for having me. >> So how surprised were
you that this blew up and failed?
>> I was incredibly shocked. I'm actually you know,
we're how many days after the fact and I'm still I'm
still a little shocked and dismayed, to be very, very
frank with you. >> Why?
>> I just think it's a good package. Really? Since
January, we've been working with the governor in good
faith on this. So for those that say this was done out
of the blue, that is not true. This is something
that we've been working on. And anybody inside the
Madison bubble know we've been working on that.
That's what kind of shocks me the most that we
couldn't get this across the finish line, even
though people knew we were working on this personally.
And I'm just speaking for me. I hope the governor
calls us back in for a special session. I really
do. >> On this or other matters.
>> On this particular matter. I mean, what what
bothers me the most about this entire package is, you
know, you have some of my Republican colleagues that,
you know, obviously, you know, they want to save the
money for a large tax cut next year. Okay. That's
fine. And then you have my Democrat colleagues that
obviously want to save all this money for next session
because, you know, they they have their various
programs that they want to do. The problem is people
are hurting right now. And the further we keep pushing
this down, the down the road is we're another year
behind. pot sweeteners that were
going back and forth? >> The property tax
exemption for disabled veterans, that was part of
a sweetener. That is something incredibly
important to those organizations. We thought
that was going to help disaster relief. That is
something that and that's had broad bipartisan
support as well. You know, in my area, we had just had
some tornadoes a couple of weeks ago, you know, up in
the Wausau area, in the Milwaukee area, the
flooding last year. So we thought that was a way to,
to sweeten the pot. But once again, this is this is
an opportunity for them to come back to us and say,
hey, we'd like to maybe see this. Or I'd like to say
that they wouldn't even entertain that. That's
what's kind of frustrating about the whole thing. We
got to the point where, you know, they didn't even want
to sit down and talk in a reasonable way.
>> Just coming back around on this a bit. Tom Tiffany
also called the measures in this temporary gimmicks.
What about that? >> I don't know, tax on
tips and no tax on overtime as a gimmick. I, I, I
respectfully disagree with that. You know the the
special education funding once again that that is and
if you want anybody to blame in like the state
legislature on who really is a hawk on, on the
special ed, it's me because as you know from your
experience, once we put money into special
education funding, regardless of what the
economy does, that is money we as a state can never
pull back because we have a federal requirement. Once
we put a dollar amount in special education, it has
to stay there. We can never claw that back if we have
another horrible economy. So I am a little careful on
what we do for special ed. Do we need to do it?
Absolutely. And so to say that's a gimmick. Once
again, I respectfully disagree with that. That's
permanent funding for our schools. So I, I disagree
on on the premise on both of those.
>> So as to the economy, some people wanted to be
prudent, hold on to any projected surplus in case
it sours, you know, potentially more than it
has. What about that persuasion?
>> You know, I, I've heard that that's an argument
some have tried to make. The fact of the matter is,
we had a really good state budget coming out of the
state budget late fall. We saw our projection numbers
higher than anticipated just in January. You know,
the numbers really like our economy is doing better
than we anticipated, even on Monday. You know, Monday,
the fiscal Bureau and wonderful Bob Lang and his
incredible team over there came out with another. It's
going to be another $300 million that we are above
projections. So I would never. And let me repeat
this, I would never sign or vote on a bill if I knew
that was going to put us in financial peril. That's not
the way we've been doing budgeting over the last 4
or 5 budgets. We live within our means, and this
budget and the proposal that unfortunately failed
Wednesday night lives within our means. Once
again, people think about if this was all said and
done, we'd still probably will well over have
probably nine 800 to 900 million $1 million in our
checking account. But then a lot of people don't
forget about the rainy day fund. Rainy day fund is
like our savings account, and that's well over $2
billion and that's earning interest. It's almost $7.5
million a month just in interest. So financially,
the state is doing very well. And I would never
once again, I never would put any of that in jeopardy
if there was a question about if we could not
afford this or not. >> Representative Tony
Kurtz, thank you very much Kurtz, thank you very much