A Mighty Veto Pen

Being fairly new to Wisconsin, I had no idea that Governor Jim Doyle had this sort of power. He can actually cross out words in legislative bills to create new sentences, such as was done here to transfer money from the transportation fund into the general fund to add more money in the 2006 state budget for education. Naturally, the Republicans in the state Legislature are now spoiling for a constitutional amendment to ban this, shall we say, creative bit of editing on the part of Wisconsin's Democratic Governor.
Personally, I applaud Doyle for this move; education should be a high priority in every state. Wisconsin's educational spending limits are dictated by a 1993 law that defines the annual increase allowed for educational spending. Sadly, this annual increase has failed to keep up with growing costs for the K-12 school districts, something that Governor Doyle was adamant about addressing for 2006.

I also can't help but notice that in all the years that Republican Governor Tommy Thompson was using the same veto pen, nary a contrary word was uttered by the Republicans in the Legislature. How do you spell "hypocrisy" again?