Not surprising that enough of the Wisconsin's most conservative GOP legislators have shot down, stamped on and shredded a budgetary trial balloon lofted address the state's over-committed, under-funded, boondoggle-ridden highway financing budget.
The proposal that will not see the light of day would have asking those heavy, road-busting 18-wheel big rigs to kick in a little more money to help maintain what's rated as the second-most deteriorated highway-and-street network in the country, where some roads have been allowed to crumble to gravel.
Of course these special-interest GOP legislators would not ask of the trucking businesses something so eminently logical.
GOP legislators, like their leader Scott Walker and an equally partisan, big business- obeisant sidekick AG Attorney General Schimel, see their mission as protecting and enabling and otherwise catering to special interests, not the public interest.
* Why else would Schimel have let a big corporate air polluter get off penalty-free despite the evidence in hand?
* Why else would Walker set in motion a "chamber of commerce mentality" Department of Natural Resources that has avoided inspections of scores of heavily-polluting and ever-expanding, manure-dumping large-scale animal feeding operations?
An agency that has green-lit everything from sand mine excavation of wetlands and pristine timber stands to an expansion of a north-south tar sand oil pipeline running from Superior to the Illinois border.
* Why would Schimel and the Legislature set in motion the bill Walker just signed - - in private - - that gives permanent control of 13,000 high-capacity wells to their owners?
But back to the red-ink stained, road-builder friendly and now trucking-company friendlier state road budget which has our self-sabotaging 'conservative' Governor and GOP-run Legislature paralyzed:
Do they opt for Illinois-style road tolls? Don't bet on it.
An increase in the gas tax or vehicle registration and licensing fees? Walker says no to a gas tax increase, since he has a re-election campaign to launch and has proposed about a million times that he will never raise a tax. Except that he has, but that's another story, and added fees will generate insufficient revenues but a predictable citizen outcry.
End some proposed big projects and slow others as Walker has proposed? Legislators are balking. They need to show their constituents they're doing something concrete for their districts, even if the near-term impact is lane closing/orange barrel hell.
There aren't too many other alternatives. Even an earlier stick-it-to-liberals proposal to bump up fees on electric and hybrid vehicles didn't get any traction: again, the revenue gains are marginal and the bad public relations could bite Republicans who are trying to attract high-tech businesses and middle-class residents to a state with job creation numbers and in-migration data in the dumpster.
Not that I want to give these Republican over-spenders any new ideas, but if cars and truck owners are tapped out or off-limites, perhaps there's a per-cubic foot revenue capture (not, not a "tax" or "fee") which could be collected for the use of a bicycle air pump.
Or collected when the bike tire pumps are sold, since we all know that bicyclists use the roads just as the big rigs do, but are hardly paying their fair share for their pavement use.
Make sure you read about Michigan Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette calling for the closing of an aging oil pipeline belonging to bad corporate actor Enbridge running beneath the Mackinac Straits and putting Lake Michigan and crucial drinking water and recreational industries at risk.
A link to the story is here:
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said Thursday it’s time to begin the process of shutting down the twin 64-year-old oil pipelines that run across the bottom of the picturesque Straits of Mackinac.
Schuette's name should ring a bell because he recently filed heavy-duty felony charges against several high-ranking state and local officials in the wake of the catastrophic poisoning of Flint's water supply, including the charging of appointees of incumbent Michigan GOP Gov. Rick Snyder.
A couple of things to keep in mind:
* Because of a two-term limit, Snyder cannot run for re-election in 2018, and with Flint matters still ongoing and its nightmare cemented as Snyder's enduring legacy, it will behoove any candidate for Governor to run with a solid environmental and public record firmly established.
Schuette is considered a possible candidate: his actions in the Flint and Mackinac pipeline issues give him those bona fides.
* It also places him back into what had been mainstream politics in Michigan, as I understand it, where Republican Governors like William Milliken and John Engler had good, even admirable environmental records because essentially all of Michigan is within the Great Lakes basin and strong, consensus water preservation was traditionally bi-partisan, or non-partisan, and certainly better than we have in Wisconsin right now.
Our "chamber of commerce mentality" GOP Governor Walker and Attorney General Brad Schimel move in lockstep with the ideological right's insistence on private control of public waters and our shared environment, regardless of proven consequences.
Note that Walker's Department of Natural Resources had not even followed its own procedures designed to fix known contamination issues and guarantee clean drinking water near a growing number of industrial-scale animal feeding operations.
Part of a pattern of the separation of public policy from the public interest that the DNR has laid down at Walker's direction since the beginning of his administration, and which has accelerated her time.
And as the Mackinac Straits pipeline issue broke into the news, Walker's office had no comment, a TV news outlet reported.
Little wonder. Walker has used Enbridge as campaign photo op material, despite its horrible spill and pollution record nationally and in Wisconsin.
Walker and Schimel, with backing from the GOP-run Legislature, have separately or together worked to: evade the intent of the state's constitutional mandate that the waters of the state belong to everyone; privatize the state's groundwater; speed the expansion of a north-south oil pipeline by minimizing the project's environmental reviews; bulldoze wetlands to create sand mines, pull back prevention of phosphorous dumping into rivers, and on pollution enforcement generally, and cooperate with Trump initiatives to remove federal protections for wetlands and other surface waters.
Hard to overstate the differences between the current Wisconsin approach under Republicans and environmental law enforcement by the Republican Attorney General in our neighboring state across Lake Michigan.
And if the explanation is, 'that's what's been created in the wake of Flint,' wouldn't it be better if Wisconsin came to its senses and recovered what Gaylord Nelson, Aldo Leopold and John Muir had bequeathed us.
And so we wouldn't need a Flint-level disaster to snap us back to reality?
As Wisconsin agencies cater to a major Scott Walker golf course developer/ donor by laying the groundwork for bulldozing a nature preserve and even privatizing some land in an adjoining, water-rich state park - - continuing a pattern boosted by a reckless opinion by Attorney General Brad Schimel and corporately-controlled GOP legislators whose actions further embed private control of wetlands and pristine timber acreage and drinking water into special-interest hands - - we should all remember that decades ago the Wisconsin Supreme Court warned against this very short-shortsightedness when it affirmed that Wisconsin's waters belong to everyone:
"A little fill here and there may seem to be nothing to become excited about. But one fill, though comparatively inconsequential, may lead to another, and another, and before long a great body may be eaten away until it may no longer exist. Our navigable waters are a precious natural heritage, once gone, they disappear forever," wrote the Wisconsin Supreme Court in its 1960 opinion resolving Hixon v. PSC and buttressing The PublicTrust Doctrine, Article IX of the Wisconsin State Constitution...
This permanent loss of the people's water and everything the water supports is exactly what is happening at the Lake Michigan shoreline golf course proposal moves along apace, or when more and more industrial-scale feedlots are opened at the expense of the land and the groundwater, or when more and more sand mines are gouged out from woodland stands and the wetlands holding and filtering the people's waters.
We've been warned. The Walkerites are ignoring it, carelessly, intentionally and self-servingly.
[Updated] The threat to pristine land next to and even inside a popular state park on the Lake Michigan shoreline is getting more serious.
The Wisconsin Natural Resources Board agreed at a regularly-scheduled meeting Wednesday to allow The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to begin amending the master plan which manages land use in and access to the popular, publicly-owned Kohler-Andrae State Park south of the City of Sheboygan.
The move by Wisconsin's resource policy and oversight Board despite organized opposition at the grassroots likely helps pave the way - - literally - - to accommodate construction of a privately-owned, high-end golf course in the 247-acre wetland/timber/rare-dune-and native peoples' artifact-rich nature preserve next door.
Meaning that the Board joins other public agencies smoothing way for the golf course and its well-connected prime mover, including:
* GOP Gov. Scott Walker's 'chamber of commerce mentality' Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. It has worked at no charge with the developer for about two years to refine permit planning;
* Walker's Department of Administration. It has placed no barriers to slow down a fast-paced effort by project developer Kohler Co. to annex the nature preserve to the City of Sheboygan from the smaller, neighboring Town of Wilson, where the nature preserve and local opponents are located.
Update: Former Kohler-Andrae State Park Superintendent Jim Buchholz, who retired in 2013 after 36 years with DNR, had earlier raised strong objections to the project and ceding control of any park land to a private business, saying, in part:
The Dept. of Natural Resources has no right and nor any responsibility to “give away” 4-plus acres of publicly-owned state park land to anyone, especially to a “for-profit” business or person for the purpose of increasing the revenue of such business or to increase the income of any person or corporation.
The EIS [Environmental Impact Statement] document map shows a total of over 19 acres that are being considered for Kohler’s development with no detail as to the actual footprint of the development. The EIS mentions the size of maintenance building to be constructed on state park lands but does not state the size of the paved parking lot that would need to service the proposed maintenance building.
The area listed for conversion is listed as “lightly used”… as if it doesn’t matter if the land is given away or not.
This is far from the truth. The area may not be used as heavily as the park’s beach and picnic areas but this was by design by park management...
"There is no reason to take away public state park land and destroy rare sand dune formations and habitat for Kohler’s shop building and parking area development when they have 247 acres of their own property to work with...
This unique forest, dune and wetland area is an extension of the rare sand dune ecosystem that is currently protected and managed by the DNR on the Kohler-Andrae State Park property."
Here are some photos Buchholz recently shot of park acreage - - public land - - which could be lost or altered to accommodate golf course road access or the construction of a proposed maintenance shop.
He makes clear that the acreage the developer seeks inside the park is not scrub, insignificant or otherwise unimportant land:
"In reality the entire area is an extension of the State Natural Area across the road and is comprised of open and wood sand dune formations complete with rare vegetation and active habitat for the area's wildlife."
While it's good to see that GOP-controlled Congressional bodies are dumping big Trump budget cuts, can Congress force Trump's agencies to spend the money?
One subcommittee has rejected Trump’s proposal to eliminate the $1.6 billion Food for Peace program that ships U.S.-grown food to hungry nations. The other subcommittee has restored a $1.2 billion cut proposed by Trump to Army Corps of Engineers water and navigation projects.
You've probably read by now that The Washington Post caught our pathologically dishonest President
posting on the walls of at least five of his golf clubs phony Time magazine covers lauding you-know-who.
And, yes, the Post story documents that the fake TIME cover is posted at Trump's northern Virginia golf club where media had earlier found a plaque signed by Trump commemorating a fake Civil War battle site.
“Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot. The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as ‘The River of Blood.’ It is my great honor to have preserved this important section of the Potomac River!”
Nice sentiment, small problem: there apparently was no such battle.
Hard to miss that the commemorative marker repeats the word "great" three times in three sentences and manages to congratulate Trump, too:
This is a sickness, you know.
Here's what reporters and constituents should ask Ron Johnson if they see him over the July 4th Congressional break:
"Please explain this contradiction of your own making."
* The conservative Washington Examiner reported earlier this week you said that the Senate bill would include no cuts to Medicaid:
“I don’t think anybody is proposing any cuts,” Mr. Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, said on MSNBC.
* Today the Washington Examiner reported:
The Republican healthcare draft legislation released by the Senate last week would cause 22 million more people to become uninsured over a decade..."
Updating the tainted, twisted tale of the stalled $151 million expansion of Wisconsin State Highway 23 - - check out this 2011 news story - - previously noted on this blog in May, 2015, for example:
This blog has been following for years the outrageous attempt to build a costly expansion of State Highway 23 connecting Fond du Lac and Plymouth - - posts, for example here, and here...
Note also the similarities in the ruling to Judge [Lynn] Adelman's earlier rulings in cases involving WisDOT and its deficient planning and spending on State Highway 164 west of Milwaukee and on I-94 expansion in the Zoo Interchange at the Milwaukee County/Waukesha County border where WisDOT left out transit improvements for low-income residents with access to cars.
Here's the Tuesday news update:
A three-judge US Federal Appeals Court panel has ruled that the state's proposed spending on Highway 23 was based on bad data, so while the state is free to go ahead with the project but only without any Federal funding:
If put back on track, the project is expected to cost $151 million, according to state DOT figures released in February. So far, about $34 million has been spent.
The project has long been delayed because of the litigation. Gov. Scott Walker recommended putting it off another two years even before last week’s decision came down. The ruling could mean further delays.
The federal court rulings sure do make me wonder about why Wisconsin's highway projects keep running over budget, according to this January report:
The cost of major road projects in Wisconsin doubled between the time they were planned and built, a sweeping audit of the state Department of Transportation revealed Thursday.
It cost $1.5 billion to build 19 major projects between 2006 and 2015 — $772.5 million more than originally estimated, the Legislative Audit Bureau found. Even though the state was spending money on most of these projects for 18 years or more, the DOT didn't take into account the considerable effects that inflation and changes to project design would have on those costs over time.
Another 16 projects that were ongoing as of August 2016 saw similar spikes in their costs. Originally expected to cost $2.7 billion, they are now slated to come in at $5.8 billion, the audit found.
And who thinks that the state transportation budget which is stalled in the Legislature and is drowning in red ink and has Legislative Republicans fighting with each other has a spare $151 million lying around to pay for the Highway 23 boondoggle?
Republicans have complete legislative majorities and executive control in the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison and the US Capitol, too, but they have so much internal dissension that they can't do much of anything right now. Which is good for the country.
In Madison, the budgetary process is at a standstill with a key deadline now out of reach - - predicted weeks ago, here - - as State Senators and Assembly members battle over which will get to pose for the Holiest of Holy Pictures or reach their hands out first to special interest ideological and/or road-builder donors whose water they successfully carried.
At the US Capitol - -
- - GOP Senate leaders have just pulled back their intentionally-cruel tax-cut plan disguised as a health-care bill, in part because millionaire GOP members like Ron Johnson and ideological anti-government, self-deluded bots like Rand Paul believe "freedom" for American citizens means being their being free to suffer into death or bankruptcy from birth defects, infectious disease or other involuntary catastrophes stripped of help in the wealthiest country in the world from the larger society which government can and is supposed to protect.
Or as White House counselor and celebrity hack Kellyanne Conway put it to the home-bound severely-disabled or bed-ridden nursing home seniors ticketed for Medicaid cutoffs - - get a job.
I think the lesson here is that governance by selfishness has a paralyzing effect on the governing.
To understand why Wisconsin GOP/Tea Party Senator Ron Johnson wants even deeper cuts to the public provision of health insurance to millions of Americans either not in his millionaire class or with genes as lucky or perfect, you have to remember that his limitless obsession with Obamacare goes way back.
A public official with even the most minimal sensibilities or sense of American history would never issue the news release which Johnson put out on January 19, 2011, just 14 days after being sworn in as a Senator:
“I truly do believe that the passing of Obamacare is the single greatest assault on our freedom in my lifetime.
Johnson could parse "our freedom" to fit his beliefs, just as he parsed the word 'cut' to deny that the Senate's tax-cut bill deeply cut Medicaid.
But for the record, Johnson was borne in 1955, so he puts Obamacare and the health care it extended to millions of his fellow citizens as worse for "our freedom" than, say, the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 people.
Or the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Or the attempted assassinations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
Kris Khristofferson said that "freedom's just another word for nothing else to lose."
For Ron Johnson, preserving "our freedom" means being free to make sure people in need through no fault of their own get no helping hand in the land of the free.
Props to Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett for having the City of Milwaukee repost on its website here the world-renowned scientifically-vetted climate change web pages, studies and findings which the US EPA under Donald Trump has deleted.
One scientist who had managed now-deleted website for five years called its removal "a declaration of war."
This spring, political officials at the Environmental Protection Agency removed the agency’s climate change website, one of the world’s top resources for information on the science and effects of climate change.
To me, a scientist who managed this website for more than five years, its removal signifies a declaration of war on climate science by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. There can be no other interpretation.
I draw this conclusion as a meteorologist with a specialization in climate science and as an independent voter who strives to keep my political and scientific views separate. I concede that this specific issue is personal for me, given the countless hours I spent working on the site. But it should be obvious to anyone how this senseless action runs counter to principles of good governance and scientific integrity.
Interesting that Scott Walker's WI DNR did the same thing some months ago.
By the way, this is what air quality looked like in New York City as seen from The World Trade Center in 1968, two years before the US Clean Air Act was adopted.
GOP/Tea Party WI US Senator Ron Johnson and compassion-fighter is right.
And so is Trump White House adviser Kellyanne Conway who reminds us that people who want health-care better than the Medicaid they're on the cusp of losing are always free to get a job.
The millionaire Johnson/ex-Oshkosh plastics manufacturer-turned-medical expert correctly labeled as "wimpy" the Senate's version of the tax-cut-for-the-rich bill disguised as health-care reform [sic].
And we know Johnson's telling the truth because the more muscular House version jammed through by millionaire and millionaire-obeisant Speaker Paul Ryan targeted 24 million low-income Americans for Medicaid terminations while the Senate version caves and settles on a mere 22 million disabled, wheel-chair or nursing home-bound and birth-defect saddled young freeloaders rightfully thrown off Medicaid.
Johnson's focused on ending coverage for pre-existing conditions, so suck it up, Zika babies, spina bifida children, infants borne with incurable Type I diabetes or the next few hundred or tens or thousands of Americans who contract bird flu, for example.
The Senate wimp-out nailed by Johnson translates to roughly 40,000 Wisconsinites who would be free to keep their unconscioable theft of prescription drugs, nursing home meals, breathing tubes, wheelchair parts and transfusion equipment - - and hope - - which the House version says more clearly they have no right to access.
No wonder he wants deeper cuts to Obamacare:
In recent days, he has defended the bill’s Medicaid rollbacks against criticism from Democrats but has complained the bill doesn’t go far enough in a conservative direction in dismantling Obamacare rules and mandates. He told [right-wing radio host Hugh] Hewitt Monday it was “wimpy reform.”
[Updated from 5/23/17 - - Johnson don't understand, or care, that pre-existing conditions arise involuntarily at birth, or through the spread of disease, or via unknown origins. Yet he wants Obamacare cut further than does the Senate's "wimpy" bill.]
---------------
I noted in a post Thursday about WI GOP US Sen. Ron Johnson's obfuscation
about whether he'd support his party's 'health-care'-cum tax cut plan - - (definitely, if there are deeper program cuts, apparently) - - and I included a link about Johnson denying that cuts to Medicaid were coming:
Sen. Ron Johnson said Thursday that he doesn’t see cuts to Medicaid spending in the new Republican health care law.
“From my standpoint, I keep hearing about these cuts in Medicaid. I don’t have the numbers yet, but what I’ve seen — I might define cuts differently, cuts to me is actually deduction in spending year to year — I don’t think anybody is proposing any cuts,” Mr. Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, said on MSNBC.
Setting aside the full-strength swampian-parsing that Johnson has totally mastered now that he's into a second six-year DC term, here are some facts from Lynn Breedlove, long-time Wisconsin social services expert and all-around straight-shooter, about what's in store for the 1,250,000 state kids, seniors and other lower-income Wisconsinites who are covered by Medicaid in line for Trump-supported, GOP-drafted 'reform.'
Recently, the House of Representatives voted to cut the program by 25 percent over the next 10 years. The Senate’s health care plan would cut Medicaid over a longer timeline than the House bill, but the cuts would be deeper because the bill changes the program’s funding formula.
Meaning:
In the House bill, our state would need to increase state spending on Medicaid (the largest program in the state budget) by 30 percent in 2021 to avoid cutting services. That won’t happen...
Not to mention:
At the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, 54 percent of the patients have their health care paid for by Medicaid. Do you believe all those kids will get the care they need with federal funding cuts that big? I don’t...
And here's more that Johnson didn't acknowledge:
And what about schools? In the 2016-17 school year alone, Wisconsin schools received $187 million in Medicaid funding for school services. The cuts Congress is considering would likely cost many school nurses, psychologists and therapists their jobs.
If it's a contest between Johnson and Breedlove, I'm betting on Breedlove, because he understands that a cut is a cut is a cut.
{Update - - Johnson now says Monday that the bill is "wimpy" and doesn't go far enough with Obamacare repeal. I'd thought he didn't understand how health insurance works - - comparing it buying car insurance - - but now I think he doesn't believe in it unless, like the millionaire he is, one can afford to pay the entire cost oneself. So - - bring on the Death Panels.]
Because today's official "score, or estimate of the newly-uninsured, will not differentiate between sedans, SUV's and light trucks, these experts say below.
Noted here also.
Wisconsin Tea Party/GOP Senator Ron Johnson
himself has a serious pre-existing condition:
Knowledge deficits.
So deep and wide that he'd be disqualified from working as a back-up town government lawn mowing summer part-time intern, as he thinks people with pre-existing medical conditions should pay more money for their health insurance because drivers with poor records pay more for their auto insurance.
Ron Johnson: People with preexisting condition don’t deserve insurance like ‘somebody who crashes their car’
Someone needs to take Johnson aside and explain to him that many pre-existing health conditions arise involuntarily at birth or arrive through no-fault spread of disease, or have unknown origins.
Seriously, what is wrong with this man?
Kids at Children's Hospital with spina bifida or seniors in nursing homes with little money and Alzheimer's disease, or babies born with the Zika virus are comparable to habitual speeders or drunk drivers?
Who would suggest pricing sick people - - at the risk of their lives or financial survival or their families' well-being - - out of the health insurance market.
Are there no limits to Johnson's ignorance, lack of heart and infinite capacity to embarrass the State of Wisconsin and people with a normal amount of commonsense and, dare I say what Johnson and Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan lack - - compassion?
In the last few days, Johnson has also failed to grasp that the upper-income tax-cut bill secretly-crafted by his party and disguised as a health-care measure wipes out federal funding to cities and states to infections prevent diseases and bioterrorism and also said cuts to Medicaid coverages for sick children, nursing-home bound seniors and many disabled Americans were not cuts at all.
Then again, what would you expect of a man who neither encouraged a young GOP staffer to report a sexual assault by a state legislator or supported a state bill to make it easier for child sexual assault victims to sue their molesters' place of employment?
Or who says that climate change is due to sunspots and scientists who point to human activity as the cause are "crazy."
"I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change," Johnson said. "It's not proven by any stretch of the imagination."
Johnson, in a [2010 interview], described believers in manmade causes of climate change as "crazy" and the theory as "lunacy."
"It's far more likely that it's just sunspot activity or just something in the geologic eons of time," he said.
[Updated from 6/14/17] I noted in a post yesterday that Wisconsin Tea Party/GOP Senator Ron Johnson was busy parsing the meaning of the word "cut"
when denying that his party's high-bracket tax-cut bill crafted in secret and disguised as a health-care plan cut the life-saving Medicaid program - - watch this video, Senator - - which is absolutely targeted for deep and massive cuts to pay for the big tax cut Johnson and his party have long sought for upper-income Americans which keep the GOP afloat:
As The New York Times disclosed:
...tax increases for high-income Americans that Democrats used to help pay for the Affordable Care Act are being scrapped entirely.
A 3.8 percent tax on investment income over $250,000 for a couple would be history, as would an 0.9 percent surcharge on payroll taxabove that same level. The Tax Policy Center estimates that would amount to an average tax cut of $54,000 for households making over $1 million.
Here's another cut in the hurriedly-drafted Senate bill I haven't heard the former Oshkosh plastics manufacturer address - - the one that would wipe out funding for disease and bioterrorism prevention which the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides to cities and states (that would include Wisconsin and Oshkosh), as The Washington Post explains:
The health-care bill that Senate Republicans released Thursday would eliminate critical funds for core public health programs that make up about 12 percent of the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The money supports programs to prevent bioterrorism and disease outbreaks, as well as to provide immunizations and screenings for cancer and heart disease.
The Senate bill would end funding starting in fiscal 2018, which begins in October. That’s more quickly than theHouse GOP legislation, which would gut funding for the Prevention and Public Health Fund starting in October 2018...
The CDC’s own immunization program received $324 million from the fund last year, dollars that were sent directly to states and local communities to improve immunization registries and infrastructure.... about 40 percent of the CDC’s total immunization program budget last year.
That support has been especially crucial given the increase in recent years of vaccine-preventable diseases outbreaks such as measles, mumps, and whooping cough. An ongoing measles outbreak in Minnesota has already exceeded the total number of measles cases reported in the entire United States last year.
I am waiting for Johnson to address those cuts.
Perhaps he'll settle on a 'financing reprogramming,' or 'negative dollar allotment.'
Or say nothing.
