The Republicans want to give me a tax break. No thank you very much.
In a plan authored by Republican lawmakers and passed Tuesday in the state Assembly, Wisconsin would eliminate state taxes on retirement income up to $150,000 for couples, each of whom is at least 67 years old. That doesn’t quite apply to my situation yet, but it will all too soon.
This makes so little sense on so many levels. For one thing, what Wisconsin needs is more young people. We need people in the workforce and entrepreneurs who will create jobs. The last thing we need is more old folks who are net consumers of resources.
And for another thing, we should be investing in kids. Gov. Tony Evers is right to want to use some of the state’s $4 billion surplus to make permanent (or at least to extend) a COVID-era program that helped child care centers stay afloat. The program had the effect of raising wages for child care workers by about $2 an hour to $12.66. Still way too low, but better.
It’s telling, however, that this is enough of an issue that Republicans found it necessary to respond with their own plan. That plan is a series of bills that range from the ineffectual to the damaging. As for ineffectual, they would exempt diapers, strollers and other baby accouterments from the sales tax. In the damaging category they would lower the age from 18 to 16 for a child care worker to be the sole provider for a group of children and they would allow an increase in the number of kids per provider. So, more kids under the care of less experienced providers. And they would allow wages to float back down while they added more work for the providers. All this from the party that is against abortions in almost all circumstances. They care about the unborn. It’s the born they don’t like so much.
But at least it’s encouraging that the GOP seems to feel that they need to move Evers’ way. On the broader tax issue, Evers vetoed their budget language that would have heavily weighted an income tax cut toward the rich. They have now come back with a proposal that does not cut the top rate. Instead they focus the cut on the middle rate, but that is not a “middle class tax cut” as they want to portray it.
So, Evers was right to say he’d veto this tax cut as well. The problem is the tax brackets themselves. Wisconsin already has what is essentially a flat tax. The middle bracket of 5.3% applies to married couples earning between $36,840 and $405,000. So, it’s pretty much impossible to target a tax break at the true middle class. What really needs to happen is that that huge spread of incomes needs to be divided into two or three smaller brackets so that tax relief can be targeted at those who need it.
But the bottom line here represents progress. Republicans are responding to Evers and moving toward his positions, if only slightly. A grand deal this fall would be for Evers to get the best tax cut deal he can in exchange for more child care money. That would be a good day’s work.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
