Why would moderate Wisconsin Democratic Legislators vote for this budget now that their leadership has agreed to remove healthcare reform from the budget?

One thing that moderate democrats typically fight for is ways to fix problems, not simply paying for band-aid approaches to governing.

In this case, the Republicans said they would not vote for a budget that had any tax increases. Ironic isn’t it? They had no problem voting for massive tax increases on the public when Republican Governor Tommy Thompson was in charge and Republicans controlled both houses in the State legislature. But now that they only control the Assembly, they have, after nearly 20 years of complete power, decided it was their birthright to claim to be the ones that control taxes.

So now that the dems have given up the only major initiative in this budget, what is in it for moderates? The answer is nothing. Nothing. This budget will likely be pieced together by liberals who are willing to settle for scraps and Republicans who win gloating rights for effectively killing healthcare reform.