Within weeks of passing the budget, we learned just how out of balance it was. The budget was $652 million in arrears and the Legislature was forced back into session to repair the shortfall that they could have avoided.

Unfortunately, after months of a bizarre closed-door cage match, the Republican leadership of the Assembly and the Democrat leadership of the Senate managed to produce one of the most irresponsible bills ever put forth by Wisconsin’s Legislature, and that’s saying a lot.

The budget repair bill passed by the Legislature was a package of borrowing, fund raids, budget gimmicks and faux spending cuts. For example, it delayed $125 million in school aid payments until the next budget. It refinanced tobacco settlements to get cash now, but at the cost of future cash. It took the $21 million intended to fund the Real ID law, thus pushing that necessary spending into the next budget.

Beyond that, the bill included spending increases. Only in Wisconsin would a bill intended to repair a deficit include spending increases. It included $20 million in highway spending, $18.6 million in child care subsidies, and even spending increases slated for the next budget - as if this budget wasn’t bad enough.

Finally, the budget repair bill passed by the Legislature contained a bunch of policy changes that have nothing to do with the budget, but are pet projects of various politicians. For instance, the bill adds cell phones to the state "no call list" and prohibits the transportation of invasive species.

I could go on, but suffice to say, this bill was an absolute mess that any intelligent human being would have cast aside.

The Republican leadership supported this bill because they said that they kept Gov. Doyle’s hospital tax and combined reporting out of the bill. These are good things, but in preventing these tax increases, they gave up everything else. The Republican leadership should be mindful of the fact that they control the Assembly and that nothing - NOTHING - passes the Legislature without their approval. While they prevented some atrocious ideas, they did so by passing a package of other atrocious ideas. For that, they bear equal responsibility with the Democrat leadership in the Senate.

Fortunately for conservatives in Wisconsin, Gov. Doyle used his powerful veto to make the budget repair bill more conservative. It’s still not pretty. He raided the transportation fund. He left some of the bad policy in place. But he also cut more spending than the Republicans and made the repair fare more responsible than the disgrace that the Legislature passed.

Politically speaking, this is a disaster for the Republican Party of Wisconsin. The GOP justifiably gained a lot of credit for their strong stance in the budget debate. With this budget repair bill, they abandoned their conservative principles in the name of convenience and expediency. Then Gov. Doyle came along and made the budget repair far more conservative, thus outflanking the Republicans on the right with the elections only a few months away.

This Saturday at the Republican Party Convention, Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner got it right. He said, "Unfortunately, Speaker Huebsch decided to push it (the budget repair bill) through the Assembly. And he did so in a manner which does not fix the problems of overtaxing, and replaces transportation fees with more state borrowing - exactly the same move which helped destroy the Republican brand. Everyone can see this is a political shell game that simply postpones the hard decisions. Sometimes, leadership consists of saying ‘NO’ to bad policies, rather than going along to get along."

Indeed.

I hope Wisconsin’s Republican leadership was listening.

(Owen B. Robinson, a West Bend resident, is a blogger who publishes at www.bootsandsabers.com. His column usually runs Tuesdays in the Daily News.)