Governor Tony Evers Tuesday night called for boosting funding to Wisconsin schools by $3.4 billion, creating a new program to audit health insurance companies that deny too many claims and passing a series of tax cuts.
The tax cut package totals $2 billion in relief via cutting local property taxes, eliminating the income tax on tips, and exempting products such as diapers and utilities from Wisconsin’s sales tax. And he called for a new individual tax rate that would hit millionaires. He again called for a cap on a tax break for manufacturers. The moves would generate more than $2 billion in new revenue for the state.
Altogether, Evers’ plan would spend $50.5 billion in general purpose revenue, money the state collects through things like individual, sales and corporate taxes. That’d be an increase of 18.1%, leaving the state with a gross balance of $646.3 million in the general fund at the end of 2025-27.
When factoring in federal money and other sources of revenue, the Evers budget would spend $118.9 billion, an increase of 20.3%.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos quickly dismissed Evers’ calls for “wasteful new programs,” additional regulations and income tax increases as “dead on arrival.”
GOP legislative leaders said they will work off current law, not Evers’ proposal, as they put together their version of the two-year budget. They have made similar moves before.
“As we have done in the past, we’ll take his irresponsible budget, turn it into a responsible budget that invests in education and invests in health care, but doesn’t overspend and grow the size of government,” said Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg.