Parts of Tony Evers' state budget proposal crossed out.
You decide.
Was it a tragic lost opportunity when Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ vision of Wisconsin’s future died in the Capitol?
Evers’ vision includes 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, a tax credit for caregivers, a retirement savings program for small businesses, automatic voter registration when you get a driver’s license, taxing and legalizing marijuana, gun-sales background checks, free school student lunches, ignition interlocks for convicted drunk drivers, middle-class housing incentives, restoring public employee bargaining rights and help for first-time home buyers.
Or, did the 12 Republicans who control the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee (JFC) get it right when they killed a record 545 Evers priorities by voting on May 2 to remove them from the 2023-25 state budget?
That vote meant that none of the 545 changes the governor wants can be reconsidered, unless a majority of the 16-member committee votes to do so.
Because Evers got two public forums to justify his vision — in his State of the State and budget message — and has been pitching them in regional events for weeks, let’s hear first from Republicans.
At Tuesday’s JFC meeting, co-chair Rep. Mark Born dismissed Evers’ field of policy dreams as a “massive expansion of government and reckless spending.”
The message of Evers and the four JFC Democrats who voted to keep the governor’s 545 changes in the budget is “more government, more spending, more welfare, smoke more weed,” Born added. “There really are a lot of awful things we are removing.”
When the Republicans’ budget is finished by late June, added co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein, “There will not be many new programs.”
Republicans also called Evers’ budget irresponsible, because it would potentially turn a $7-billion budget surplus on July 1 of this year into a $2-billion budget deficit on July 1, 2026.
“That’s crazy,” said Sen. Duey Stroebel, citing a report from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
Quoting the nonpartisan Public Policy Forum, Born said the budget Evers proposed in February included the “largest budget imbalance on record.”
Republicans will again give taxpayers a significant tax cut — just like the $3.4-billion tax cut they passed and Evers accepted two years ago, vowed Sen. Mary Felzkowski.
But the most senior JFC Democrat, Rep. Evan Goyke, said neighboring Minnesota and Iowa grew faster than Wisconsin in the last decade, so Evers wanted changes like paid medical leave and incentives for middle-class housing that would reverse that trend.
“We’re not growing fast enough,” Goyke said. “Government must step up.”
Democratic Sen. LaTonya Johnson said Republicans dropped programs that would help her African American constituents in Milwaukee.
Specifically, Johnson said, Republicans killed money for doulas who assist women giving birth. The infant mortality rate for African Americans in some Milwaukee neighborhoods is 20 per 1,000 live births — four times the death rate for white newborns, she said.
Milwaukee “is the worst place in the nation to raise an African American child,” Johnson added. She accused Republicans of having “no interest” in the governor’s plans to help “people of color.”
Republicans also dropped the governor’s request for background checks before gun sales and “every single item related to gun violence,” Johnson said.
Responding to the committee vote, Evers did not address the Fiscal Bureau report that his budget could lead to a $2-billion deficit by mid-2026.
Instead, Evers said, “People work hard to do the right thing, get the health care and education that they need, the housing that they need, but they need help from the Legislature. We have enough resources. We can make a better state.”
By July 1, the Legislature will pass a budget that cuts income taxes, includes more state aid for K-12 schools and gives local governments 1% of the state’s 5% sales tax, if local officials agree to mandates that come with that increased aid. Republican legislators will make hundreds of decisions over the next 10 weeks.
Evers will then again reshape the Republicans’ budget with vetoes.
Republicans promise to act separately on some of Evers priorities, including help to maintain and upgrade American Family Field to make sure the Brewers stay in Milwaukee for another generation.
But other items dropped by Republicans seem more problematic: $1.4 million over the next two years to stock public and nonprofit ambulance services with epinephrine, for example.
Steven Walters started covering state government in 1988. Contact him at stevenscotwalters@gmail.com
