Policy in budget?
Depends on if you like the policy

		Eye on the  Capitol  John Huebscher

Most of us think of budgets as documents that identify our income and expenditures.

Budgets identify the amount of money, or revenue, available for use to meet our expenses. Ideally we run a surplus so we have more to spend next year or money to save when needed.

State budgets

When it comes to state government, budgets aren't that simple. State budgets are about more than dollars and cents, revenues and expenditures.

Over the past several decades, state budgets have included policy proposals that don't always require the expenditure of funds. The reasons are, as one might guess, political as much as they are fiscal.

The budget is the one bill that must pass. Over time, governors and legislators alike have realized that adding non-fiscal policy items to a budget means: one, the policy won't be sidetracked or killed by parliamentary moves late in a session, and two, the governor can sidestep messy debates and compromises that are part of the normal legislative process.

Policies in budget

Some policies proposed in a state budget deal with government structure, like merging the UW and State University systems, or converting agencies like the DNR and the Transportation Department from one governed by a part-time board to one led by a secretary appointed by the governor. Others involve new programs, like the state ethics code or the parental choice program.

Reaction by interest groups and editorials will vary. When a policy is to their liking, they praise the governor for his leadership. When it isn't, they argue the policy warrants more scrutiny as separate legislation.

When the same party controls the governorship and the legislature, lawmakers are more likely to go along with policy proposals the governor places in the budget. When the party in power in one or both houses of the legislature differs from that of the governor, less policy survives the budget process.

Items removed

In recent years, one of the early decisions made by the Finance Committee in each budget process is that of removing some of the "policy items" in the budget. The committee did just that last week. Dozens of items were taken out of the bill and left to rise or fall on their own merits as separate legislation. These include proposals to:

• Modify the "truth in sentencing" law

• Rename and change the authority of the Parole Commission

• Modify the campaign finance appropriation

• Allow staff and faculty of the UW system to engage in collective bargaining

• Enact a statewide cap on licensed nursing home beds

• Extend "domestic partner benefits" to state employees

• Modify high school graduation requirements

Some of these proposals may yet become law in separate legislation. Some may return to the budget as part of the inevitable "horse trading" that takes place near the end of budget debates. Some may return in a future budget.

By inserting policy items in the budget, the governor took advantage of his role in the process to define the terms of the budget debate. By taking some of those items out of the budget, the legislature asserted its authority to define what policies are sufficiently related to the activities of taxing and spending to be part of the budget. To put it another way, "the governor proposed and the legislature disposed."

And the give and take of politics goes on. Just as the founders intended.

John Huebscher is executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference in Madison.

The laws of God: Keys for living holy lives

		A Culture  of Life  Kimberly Hahn

If God were to create a society, what would it look like? We need only look at the ancient Israelites.

When they were wandering in the desert, God gave them a number of laws to regulate their lives, some of which touched on openness to life.

Though these laws were descriptions of how the Israelites were to live under Moses rather than a prescription for obedience today, these commands give us insight into keys for holy living.

For instance, a couple was not to participate in the act of marriage until one week after the woman's menses, to avoid being ritually unclean. At what time of the woman's monthly cycle would they resume relations? At ovulation!

Is it a mere coincidence that couples resumed relations when she was likely to be most fertile and he would have had a higher sperm count?

Provide for family

Another law stated that a man was not to go to war immediately after his wedding: "When a man is newly married, he shall not go out with the army or be charged with any business; he shall be free at home one year, to be happy with his wife whom he has taken" (Dt 24:5).

Why? Was this so the couple could get to know each other? Yes, in the biblical sense, for to know another person in Hebrew often meant to have intimate relations from which could come a new person (see Gn 4:1).

Presumably, the new husband was to enjoy his first year of married life before military service so that he could raise up offspring in case he died at war. (This clearly does not reflect the current notion that it is better to get to know each other without children for a few years.)

Covenantal blessings

God established his law and revealed it through covenants with his people, whereby they were blessed when obedient and cursed when disobedient.

In Deuteronomy 28, Moses listed the national blessings of covenantal faithfulness: fruitfulness of the people as well as their lands and flocks. When he listed covenantal curses for the nation, he included miscarriages, stillbirths, and infertility of the people as well as of their flocks.

These verses repeated earlier promises, admonitions, and warnings (see Gn 12:2-3; 17:2; 20:18; 30:22-23; 35:11; 49:25; Lv 26:3-9, 21-22). In response to his people's obedience or lack thereof, the Lord opened or closed the womb (see Gn 20:18; 29:31; 30:22; Job 1:21).

Real wealth was understood in terms of covenantal blessings: land and descendants. What a contrast with our culture! Today, people would say that someone who is not having children or is having few is the one who is blessed. Others might say a couple with many children is practically cursed.

Yet we need to be able to say with the psalmist, "Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Lo, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord" (Ps 128:3-4).

Corporate vs. individual

Please understand these passages in context: The people of God as a group turned away from righteousness and as a group they suffered the curses.

Today, our land is polluted with innocent blood through abortion, and some who claim the name of Christ are turning away from him.

Perhaps the increase in miscarriage and infertility rates can be correlated with our society's unfaithfulness to God, but covenantal blessings and covenantal curses are applied for corporate, not individual, sins. (For instance, my miscarriages were not God's curses on me for my sins.) However, we cannot ignore our corporate responsibility for the unrighteousness in our culture.

Kimberly Hahn, mother of six, is co-author of the bestseller Roman, Sweet Home, Our Journey to Catholicism, with her husband Scott Hahn. This column is syndicated by www.OneMoreSoul.com and is reprinted from Kimberly Hahn's book, Life-Giving Love (St. Anthony Messenger Press).