Green changes tune on his gas tax record

Mark Green's campaign is frothing at the mouth about a new Greater Wisconsin Committee TV spot that says Green supported automatic increases in the state gas tax every year.

It's a lie, the Greenies say.

They didn't say that to the Spice Boys, however, when they wrote about two of the very same votes awhile back.

Green has had an election year conversion on gas tax indexing and many other issues, but here's what his campaign manager said on Dec. 1 about Green's past record:

In September 1997, [Green and Scott Walker] voted for the state budget bill that increased the gas tax by 1 cent and boosted the index by tying the automatic hikes to inflation. Then less than a year later, both Walker and Green voted to table a proposed amendment that would have suspended the automatic increases and cut the gas tax rate by 1.6 cents per gallon if the feds boosted state transportation funding by $70 million...

Mark Graul, campaign manager for Green, said his boss didn't fight the automatic increases back then because the state needed the money to fix up roads. But the Green Bay congressman now realizes it was never such a great idea, his mouthpiece acknowledged.

But Graul also tried to keep the focus off the past and instead paint a rosy picture of what life would be like if only his guy were in the East Wing.

"Looking at what happened many, many years ago isn't going to change that," Graul said of the gas tax index. "What Gov. Green is going to do is make sure there isn't any index."

Graul's the same one saying today that anyone who says Green supported indexing in the past is lying.

UPDATE: Spiceblog revisits the issue, and points out a Mark Green vote to raise the gas tax 3 cents a gallon while he was in the Assembly.

UPDATE 2: Carrie Lynch says Green's not denying that he voted to give billions to Big Oil.