Well look at that – I made the news for something other than sitting in the cole slaw at the Wendy\’s salad bar.  From Sunday\’s Wisconsin State Journal:

Who\’s to blame for state budget shortfall?

If Gov. Jim Doyle and Republican and Democratic lawmakers now find themselves in a $5 billion budget hole, it\’s because they\’ve all done part of the shoveling, budget experts said.

At least $1.6 billion of the state\’s massive budget shortfall stems from a spend-now, pay-later attitude pervasive in both political parties in the state Capitol, these analysts said.

Gov. Jim Doyle and other state leaders have blamed the two-year projected budget shortfall, which threatens everyone from taxpayers to students and the poor, on the souring economy across the country.

But commentator Christian Schneider, who predicted in January that a mild recession would lead to a $4.2 billion state budget shortfall, said the state also is paying for its failure to live within its means and to set money aside for the crisis that he and others warned could be coming.

\”We learned nothing from the 2001 downturn so now we\’re going to have to go through another painful process with this downturn,\” said Schneider, a fellow at the conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. \”There\’s nobody who\’s without blame in this situation.\”

The impetus for this article appears to be this post I wrote over at the WPRI blog that criticizes legislators for creating a budget deficit, then whining about there being a budget deficit – as if they had nothing to do with it.