LegisLaughter Corner

Here's this week's big story in Wisconsin:

Republican legislators in Wisconsin are outraged over the reasonably responsible budgets of thousands of academic departments in the University of Wisconsin system.

It turns out that various departments throughout the system maintain reserves that, on average, equal 25% of their annual budgets. According to the UW's president, that's less of a reserve than a lot of other state university systems.

Anyhow, some Republicans think he should resign.

State Senator Alberta Darling implied the existence of a conspiracy:

It looks like a scheme. It looks like you intended to put this money all over so that people wouldn't know what you were doing.

Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald questioned why the UW sought to offset $250 million in budget cuts by raising tuition:

“How can you sit there and look at that cash balance and say, ‘You know what? We're still going to go in and ask for a 5.5 percent [tuition] increase in each year.’ I can't imagine what that discussion was like.”

Senate President Mike Ellis tried (unsuccessfully) to show solidarity with the working class in the face of the elitists in Berkeley Austin Madison:

“There’s a degree of arrogance here on the part of the university [system]. They all think they're Ph. D's and we ought to be working at a Jiffy Lube.“

I mean, I TOTALLY GET that the Republican legislature would have cut the UW System's budget EVEN MORE and would have cut student aid (rather than merely refusing to raise it) had they known that's how budgets work. I'm just not sure [I'm totally sure] they would have practically ended collective bargaining with public employees' unions had they known that some department at UW Oshkosh was sitting on three months' worth reserve funding.

Also of note, this all went down during a hearing on how the hippies in UW System administration wanted to adopt harsh personnel rules favored by Republican Governor Scott Walker.

In conclusion, PRINCIPLES.

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Update: Earlier today, Democratic legislators joined the republicans in calling the surplus unjustifiable. Neat!