Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle announced his budget proposal for 2003-2005 tonight in Madison. Doyle is calling on the Wisconsin State Legislature to pass a balanced budget, and laid out a number of ideas on how to achieve this. The governor is proposing cutting approximately 2900 state jobs, cutting the UW system by $250 million, delaying reconstruction of the Marquette interchange in Milwaukee, and lowering the legal blood-alcohol level limit to 0.08 in order to avoid losing precious federal transportation money.

"For the first time in 22 years, Wisconsin will live within its means," said Doyle obviously referring to the previous Thompson/McCallum administrations. Idealogues on the right may find it ironic that it's the Democratic governor of Wisconsin who's cutting spending at a record level.

At the national level, the Bush administration is producing record deficits with its proposed budget, just a few years after the Democratic Clinton administration produced budget surpluses.

It's going to become harder for Republicans to run for office on a platform where Democrats are portrayed as the taxing and spending politicians. Recent history indicates that at the executive branch level locally and nationally, it's Democrats who have been fiscally responsible and Republicans who have been the big spenders.