The Iowa legislative session starts back up today for more budget discussions.

District 24 Senator Jerry Behn says they usually don’t start the week until 1pm on Mondays to give time to those legislators traveling a longer distance, but they’ll begin at 10am this morning.

“The rumor has it that we’re going to go throughout the week as long as it takes to finish and that if it goes into Thursday, Friday, Saturday, whatever, it doesn’t matter.  We’re going to keep going to try and get it wrapped up.”

However, he points out that the Senate Democrats have claimed that their budget matches what Governor Terry Branstad’s budget is when he presented his version at the beginning of the session.

Behn says that might be true for the overall numbers, but they are taking a lot of the budgetary funds off-budget and putting it in other places.  Some examples are shifting $6.4 million to fund Clarinda and Mount Pleasant’s mental health facilities into the Social Services Federal Block Grant, which the United States Congress hasn’t approved yet.  Another area where Behn says money is shifting is $51 million in additional savings from Medicaid to managed care, which is more than double the amount that the Governor had in his proposal.

Behn doesn’t agree the budgetary decisions that the Senate Democrats have made.

“They’re taking money off budget and that’s the is exact kind of irresponsible stuff that they did when they had Governor (Chet) Culver in there.  So you got to be sure that you only spend ongoing money on ongoing programs.”

The Senate’s budget bills were done and sent over the House last week.  Behn will be our guest on today’s Let’s Talk Greene County program that airs during the 9am, noon and 5pm hours on 98.9 FM KGRA.