10 Days of the Legislature
We are now in the last full week of the Indiana General Assembly. This is where life gets interesting. This is where lawmakers (Senate Republicans and House Democrats) get together in a room and try to negotiate differences in legislation that has passed out of both chambers. And hanging over their heads is the spectre of of Governor Mitch Daniels. As far as I am concerned, there are only three real issues lawmakers will have to get resolved if they don’t want to stay late: the budget, unemployment insurance and the Capital Improvement Board.
IB wrote about the CIB yesterday, so today we’ll just focus on the budget and unemployment insurance.
The Budget
- The chambers will have to compromise over a House plan that budgets for one year and a Senate plan that does two years. Speaker Pat Bauer has said his priorities were jobs and education, while on the Senate Republican side they want to preserve the surplus as much as possible. A new factor into the equation is the state revenue forecast released Friday which was not as bad as it could have been; showing the state down about $830 million, not as bad as the $1 billion as originally thought. However, lawmakers are skeptic because they’ve been down that road before and the numbers have been wrong and the state was in a deeper whole than thought.
- I think on the budget, Senate Republicans get a slight upper hand, because of the economic stimulus dollars which is shoring up a lot of programs right now. So education is fully funded. Their hope is that the stimulus will provide a two-year stop gap in the shortfall and by 2011 the economy will have turned around. It is somewhat wishful thinking, but it works for now. The real question is will the Governor go along with the program? Right now, I don’t think so. I say that in part based on an interview I did this morning with State Budget Director Chris Ruhl who said the administration will not be afraid to keep lawmakers here past their April 29 adjournment date if they don’t pass an acceptable budget and unemployment insurance plan.
Unemployment Insurance
- With Indiana’s unemployment rate now averaging 10-percent, you’d think that would be motivation to get a working plan in place. However the conference committee that was supposed to be working on this hasn’t really met in the past week or so. Democrats don’t want benefits cut, Republicans don’t want the system to go belly up any further. Since these sides aren’t meeting, and we’ve only got a few days left, I would not be surprised to see the federal government step in and take over Indiana’s unemployment fund, because lawmakers failed to act and get past their own differences.
Life is going to be fun for the next few days.
