Doyle Won't Veto Entire Budget

Caught this at the JS's State Politics blog. It confirms what most have known, only if Doyle was listening to an idiot [coughXoff/CapTimes/EdGarveycough], would he veto the entire state budget.

This confirms he won't.

Twice last week, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle talked about how he will respond to the state budget sent to him by Republicans who control the Legislature -- and both times he did so in ways that signaled he won't veto the entire $54-billion spending plan.

That's significant because, until last week, Doyle has publicly insisted that the GOP budget was so horrible he may have no choice but to veto it entirely, which no governor has ever done.

Thursday, Doyle said he would sign into law a package of new tax and tuition breaks, expanded benefits and other changes in the budget that would help Wisconsin's 497,000 military veterans. Against the backdrop of Wisconsin losing more than 40 of its native sons and daughters in Iraq and Afghanistan, the governor said the new benefits were fitting and overdue.

Asked whether promising to sign the pro-veterans package into law means he won't dump the entire Republican budget, Doyle paused. "I'll be announcing my decisions soon enough," he finally added.

One day earlier, at a state Democratic Party fundraiser at the Orpheum Theatre in Madison, Doyle thundered against the Republican version of the budget, but again suggested he had thrown out the idea of vetoing it entirely.

"“I can make a lot of this better,"” he told the crowd after detailing the GOP plan for school funding. "“I can'’t make it perfect, but I can make it better with the extensive use of (line-item) vetoes perfected by Republican governors."

At the same event, Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton also hinted Doyle would focus on individual vetoes.

"“We have a governor who is now buying ink by the barrel,"” she said, adding that he would make the budget bill “look like a Jackson Pollock painting when he'’s done."

Oh that Barbara Lawton. Woman should really considering a career in comedy after she's retired in 2006. But, then again, she has been the best life insurance policy Doyle ever purchased.