Date: 2|16|2011
What’s the Alternative to Passing the Budget Repair Bill
Public sector employees and unions continue to descend on Madison to protest the budget repair bill, that calls for public sector employees to contribute five percent to their pension and 12 percent to their healthcare in order to allow the state to pay its bills for fiscal 2011 and lay a foundation for the 2011-2013 budgets. If the budget repair bill does not pass, Wisconsin faces a grim future of even tougher decisions and hardship.
To address a shortfall in Wisconsin Medical Assistance programs, the budget repair bill offers more than $30 million in GPR savings over a three-month period by requiring state employees to contribute to their pensions and healthcare at the levels described above. To realize this savings within the medical assistance programs themselves would require:
- Eliminating services for 194,539 children; or
- Eliminating services for 92,599 adults; or
- Eliminating services for 16,284 elderly, blind or disabled persons. (Source: Secretary Smith memo, 2/8/11)
If the budget repair bill doesn’t pass, the state would then also be forced to look at laying off more than 5500 state employees to save $30 million GPR over three months. The budget repair bill and the 2011-13 Biennial Budget doesn’t contain any wage cuts, any lay-offs and has no furloughs for state employees. There were eight furlough days in the last budget.
Clearly, Wisconsin is facing a fiscal crisis. During the recession, public sector employees have been largely protected from budget cuts, and haven’t had to make the same sacrifices that so many private sector employees were forced to make. As Wisconisn tries to economically rebound, its only fair to expect public employees to carry their share of the burden.
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