The Wispolitics Budget Blog is doing a great job of covering the briefing Assembly Democrats are receiving on the budget handed over to them by their colleagues on Joint Finance.  There’s a bunch of good stuff in there, but this one stands out:

Currently, there’s a lively debate on joint and several liability language, which some are having trouble comprehending.

“Can you put it in layman’s terms?” Speaker Mike Sheridan asked.

“I’m a non-lawyer and I’ve dumbed it down as far as I can,” said an LFB staffer.

“We need a book ‘Legislating for Dummies,'” Schneider cracked.

Rep. Rob Turner suggested the proposal isn’t “ready for prime time” if the lawmakers are having trouble understanding it.

Pocan said there would be a clearer explanation for lay people handed out to the caucus by Monday.

Rep. Mark Radcliffe was not happy that the caucus was spending time worrying about joint and several.

He said he spent yesterday with a constituent who was losing her job because of the DMV center closure in his district. He said he wanted to talk about job creation “not some crap” that doesn’t matter to his constituents.

“This is ridiculous. Let’s talk about the budget and how we are going to save jobs in this budget,” Radcliffe said.

Of course, Mark Radcliffe is more concerned about saving the job of one of his constituents than he is about sweeping policy changes that could bankrupt businesses.  Honestly, if we can’t cut a couple DMV centers when we have a $6.6 billion deficit, then we can’t cut anything.

Of course, shortly thereafter, the Assembly Democrats went into closed caucus, to avoid media coverage of their confusion.