Forget the ax, the Legislature’s budget-writing committee is about to take dynamite to Governor Tony Evers’ record $104 billion budget proposal.
The Democrat’s 2023-25 budget blueprint seeks a 24 percent spending increase over the biennium, funding a long list of liberal policy initiatives and grow government agenda items.
State Representative Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam), co-chair of the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee, called Evers’ 1,800-plus page budget proposal “just another liberal wish list.”
“What he’s asking for is a massive, unsustainable increase in spending,” Born told The Wisconsin Daily Star in an interview Thursday, a day after the governor’s budget address. “I keep thinking his budgets can’t get any bigger or worse, but somehow he managed to do that last night.”
Born has been down this road before. As co-chair of the budget-writing committee, he has presided over rewrites of Evers’ previous two state budget requests, each chock full of liberal policy proposals and record spending. Born said the committee will again start from base budgeting and build out.
That means the scores of non-fiscal proposals will be stripped from the Legislature’s budget.
Asked what policy proposals he finds most concerning, Born said he didn’t have time to list the many “bad ideas” in the governor’s budget plan. He noted Evers’ renewed attempt to wipe out Act 10, former Republican Governor Scott Walker’s cornerstone public union collective bargaining reform bill that has saved local and state governments billions of dollars. He said Evers keeps going after government reform measures that have been on the books for as much as a decade or more.
Evers has the benefit of an unprecedented $7.1 billion surplus thanks to record tax collections. He wants to use the brunt of that money for a host of new initiatives, including the creation of a “cabinet-level” chief equity officer within the Department of Administration. His plan includes the addition of equity officers at 18 state agencies and commissions “that will collaborate to identify opportunities to advance equity in government operations, including determining how current government practices and policies impact communities of color and individuals with disabilities.”
It’s all under the auspices of what Evers is billing as “Wisconsin For All” Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives that promote and advance equity across state government and state programs.
“It’s not new for him to create things on his left-wing favorites of climate change and equity stuff, but to be creating a whole cabinet agency with a chief equity officer position is a first,” Born said.
Evers is proposing over $1 billion in tax cuts, even as he pitches over $1 billion in tax hikes on manufacturers, retirement investors and others. The governor says his “middle-class” tax cuts would help working Wisconsinites deal with historically high inflation. What he fails to note, Republican lawmakers say, is that runaway government spending during the pandemic is a big reason for escalating prices.
Born said Evers’ plan to pump $230 million into a generous and expansive family and medical leave program will only serve as another tax and burden on businesses. And a proposal again calling for an increase of the minimum wage is particularly tone deaf in a severe workforce shortage and an era of escalating wages, the lawmaker added.
“He just can’t seem to move on from the left-wing stuff,” Born said.
There’s a long road of budget demolition and rebuilding ahead. Time will tell if Evers plays hardball with what is poised to be a smaller Republican budget stripped of liberal policy proposals.
Does the Joint Finance Committee co-chair believe there will be a budget impasse to come?
“It’s too early to tell for sure,” Born said. “We’ll approach it much the same way, in crafting a reasonable, responsible budget that invests in Wisconsin and lowers taxes. And when we put it to the governor it will be hard for him to reject.”
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
