After weeks of delay, a state budget-balancing plan has cleared the Wisconsin Senate and now goes to the state Assembly, where it's due to be considered Wednesday.

That's the good news. The bad news is that it would still leave the state nearly $1.7 billion short three years from now.

The nonpartisan legislative Fiscal Bureau informed Republican lawmakers about that shortfall in briefings just before the Democratic-controlled Senate passed the bill on a 17-16 vote yesterday.

Bob Lang of the Fiscal Bureau says that even if the bill becomes law, the state has committed to spending $1.7 billion more than it expects to collect in taxes through the middle of 2011.

Governor Jim Doyle has already denounced two parts of the plan. One would delay $125 million in school aid payments. The other would sell and refinance bonds based on payments the state is expected to receive from cigarette and tobacco companies under a multistate settlement.

The governor instead is considering deeper spending cuts and raiding money from transportation funding to help balance the budget with his line-item veto power.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)