The recently passed U.S. Senate version of the economic recovery bill gives half a billion dollars less to Wisconsin than the bill passed by the House, according to the Washington group Federal Funds Information for States.
Compared to the House version of the bill, the Senate's bill allocates $140.5 million less for education and $453.2 million less for general state aid, which goes to local governments for programs like fire and police protection services.
Carla Vigue, spokesperson for Gov. Jim Doyle, said the governor is concerned with how the Senate's plan will affect Wisconsin.
Even with a stimulus package, [the state is] still going to need to take deep cuts,"" Vigue said. ""But with the version that the Senate passed, jobs are going to be threatened and [schools] aren't going to have the funding to do a lot of the things that they would like to do.""
The bill, called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed on a 61-37 vote with the help of U.S. Sens. Herb Kohl and U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis.
Feingold said in a statement the necessity for acting quickly and responsibly to get the economy moving prompted him to vote for the bill.
""The economic recovery package is not perfect, but it does take important steps to create and save millions of jobs while addressing our country's energy and infrastructure challenges,"" he said.
A conference committee of House and Senate members will meet this week to find a compromise between the two bills. President Barack Obama must then approve the revised package before it is implemented.
UW-Madison professor of political science Charles Franklin said the two packages are ""within spitting distance of the same total dollar amount,"" and that achieving the same price by reallocating money will be important in the bargaining.
Franklin also said he thinks state aid will be the center of the negotiations because of pressure from governors across the country.
According to wispolitics.com, the federal money coming into the state will likely have an impact on both the stimulus bill being discussed by state legislative leaders and Doyle's upcoming budget bill.
