Is the State Budget Fight More Political Theater?
Summers in Wisconsin are a time for ethnic festivals, biergartens, getting your hopes up for a good Summerfest line-up, and then having those hopes dashed by a poor Summerfest line-up. If you are a news-follower every other summer is also a time to watch what happens with the Wisconsin State Budget. Since 2019 the process has worked like clockwork, with the budget process kicking off in the late winter as the Republican-led finance committee travels around the state to perform their “listening sessions.” Activists of every stripe rush to the opportunity, recruiting many for their cause to give impassioned speeches about important issues the budget will impact. Among the talking points are prisons, Badgercare, and public education, though there will inevitably be some voucher school that sends a bus full of their students on a field trip to help sell their scam.
A few weeks later Governor Evers will unveil his proposed budget: a progressive dream that increases taxes on those rich corporate meanies, frees prisoners, expands Badgercare, and gives every child a great education and probably a PS5 too. Left leaning news media organizations fawn over the bold proposals, and the naive among us - sometimes this is me - get hopped up on hope that we forget it is never going to happen. Tony Evers doesn’t meaningfully believe in any of these goals, and certainly isn’t going to fight for them. He fills out the budget like a game of progressive Mad Libs, and slotting in the numbers and proposals that will frame him as a champion of the people.
Later the joint finance committee releases their prison expanding, medicare ignoring, childcare slashing, school privatizing proposed budget that will give themselves and their donor buddies some tasty tax cuts - yum yum. These guys HATE the Evers' budget, and proudly declare their intents to change every dang thing. Sometimes they take pains to make blatant and obvious lies about the budget that news organizations will repeat without question. There are some more technical aspects to the budget if that is your thing, and this Wisconsin Policy Forum article can tell you all about segregated funds, program revenues, and conference committees… it’s all very noun heavy.
While the mechanics exist for a population of eggheads (God bless ya) the entire budget process is theater. When Tony Evers was elected in 2018 a lot of us got our hopes up that he would use his powers to stop the bleeding of the Walker-era. However that shadow looms large thanks in part to the lame-duck laws passed by Walker after the election, and his Koch-addled legacy lives on through Robin Vos. However, it behooves all of us to not let any democrat use this as an excuse for the lack of fight over the last 3 state budgets! Because Tony loves to tout his spirit of compromise, and we are the ones left holding the bag.
In 2019 Evers signed a terrible budget that included some Ludacris tax cuts (surprising even the GOP who proposed them) and cut most of his progressive proposals in half. In the 2021 budget democrats tried some compromises in localized policing, taking advantage of the momentum around the 2020 uprising by expanding youth prisons and giving money to Community Oriented Police houses. The governor originally proposed an expansion of labor rights, fair maps and automatic voter registration! Obviously none of these things made it into the final budget, neither did roughly 50% of the proposed funding or streams of revenue. Ah! Well. Nevertheless!
The cruel sequential march of time brings us to the current budget (2023-2025) which we are experiencing in real-time. Shared Revenue is a scam, School privatization is getting worse under the Education Governor, and money that is SUPPOSED to be used to fund things that people need is going to pay for a stadium. The keys Tony Evers has dangled to distract our non-discerning baby-brains is the 500 year education funding line item veto, a move that sounds vital, but coexists with a retreat from his initial proposed $2.6 billion investment. His original budget included $300 million towards addressing the state childcare crisis, and he ultimately settled for $15 million. It also failed to make good on the governor’s progressive agenda to extend driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, or implement basic reforms to the carceral system.
The important take-away from all of this is not just that Republican legislators are ghouls but that this is a song and dance that leads to chief-simp Tony Evers caving in on whatever Boss Vos wants. But could this year be different? A national temp-check says that everyone can see the Democrat spirit of compromise is a dead end. In 2019, it just felt good to get rid of Walker, in 2021 it was Trump, and when the power was in Democrat hands in 2023 it was squandered. People are pissed, but more importantly they are mobilized. The Republican controlled Joint-Finance Committee has already striped the proposed budget to the nub as we expected. Additionally, Republicans might dodge line item veto by passing a stripped down budget and then proposing a series of appropriation bills.
In spite of all of this doom and gloom, a thing to consider for progressives is that the Republicans are not operating from the same position of unified strength they held before. If Evers utilizes his leverage, then it is they who will be blamed for passing an unsignable budget. For the first time in the six years, Evers has decided to enter into negotiation with Robin Vos and the other forgettable Republicans in his coalition. This could be a pretty good place to start, though it seems that negotiations have already broken down.
The governor's office put out a press release last Wednesday in which he laments that Republicans have not met him with his spirit of “bipartisanship” (a word he uses seven times in the statement.) He states that his top priorities were not met, including “meaningful investments for K-12 schools, to continue Child Care Counts to help lower the cost of childcare for working families, and to prevent further campus closures and layoffs at our UW System.” In exchange for these things he seemed to be offering the Republican’s their wishlist tax cuts.
It is good that the governor is fighting harder than he previously has for this budget, what remains to be seen is if this is merely the continuation of the budget theater. This is the fourth time we have seen this theatre and we’re concerned that these negotiations will not lead to progressive reforms our state desperately needs.
The governor has a very real opportunity to veto the entire state budget. This is what his base is calling for, and an appropriate wielding of power for the moment that we are in. The deadline for the signed final budget is July 1st, but is it really? If Evers were to use the media to detail all of the ways in which the Republicans have handed him an unsignable piece of legislation, then the burden of compromise rests in their hands. This is what a meaningful fight for priorities will take.
We have been told for years to vote harder, Wisconsinites have consistently shown up to elect a Democrat governor, a majority on the State Supreme Court, and to better even out the legislature. If Evers walks away from this budget without increases to Badgercare, the funding public schools desperately need, and with no material steps towards decarceration, there will be no right wing boogeyman to blame. Evers will have shown where his priorities are, and it will verify what many of us have long suspected, that governor Evers is not on “our side,” he is the right wing boogeyman.
