Another Revenue Amendment Coming Tomorrow

Will this ever stop?

This morning Sen. Glenn Grothman held a meeting of the Senate Committee on the Taxpayer Protection Amendent to vote on the original amendment announced back in February. After he and three other Republicans on the committee voted "yes" for the cameras, he quickly cast that amendment aside and announced that he would be releasing yet another version of the amendment tomorrow.

Grothman's new version appears to be similar to the amendment the Assembly approved last week. The big differnce seems to be in Grothman's version the state general fund would be capped at 110% of inflation, whereas the Assembly-approved version caps it at 90% of personal income growth.

This brings the count of amendments offered up to eight. And, keep in mind, these are just the ones that have been released publicly. There's no telling how many have been tossed around behind closed doors, which is where GOP legislators seem to feel most comfortable conducting the people's business these days.

Here they are in order of announcement:

1. Original Revenue Amendment (February 9, 2006)
2. Substitute Revenue Amendment 1 (April 4, 2006)
3. Substitute Revenue Amendment 2 (April 11, 2006)
4. Gottlieb Revenue Amendment (April 21, 2006)
5. Lasee Revenue Amendment (April 26, 2006)
6. Assembly-Considered Revenue Amendment (April 26, 2006)
7. Assembly-Approved Revenue Amendment (April 28, 2006)
8. Grothman Revenue Amendment (TBA)
   

Of course, it's still unlikely that any amendment will be able to pass the Senate tomorrow. Some senators want an amendment restricting state and local governments, others want one restricting just the state government, and still others don't want to write fiscal policy into the state constitution at all.

But if anything passes aside from the Assembly-approved amendment, we get to look forward to even more of this as the ball will get passed back to the Assembly for even more closed-door GOP caucusing.