Is it karma that tax day falls right in the middle of Wisconsin’s budget process? While most of us are scrambling to get our forms filled out and hoping that our withholding levels cover the amount of taxes we owe, Governor Evers is planning on raising tax - significantly. He needs to raise taxes not because there is not enough revenue to cover spending, but because he wants to spend more. As previously noted, the Governor wants to increase spending by over $6 billion and taxes by over $2 billion. While Yahoo Finance has Wisconsin listed as 45th overall, the Tax Foundation ranks Wisconsin 18th overall worst tax climate, and Adam McCann from WalletHub has us at 16th. Those figures do not even include the Governor’s latest tax hike proposals. Again, it’s easy to do a budget when you spend unlimited amounts of money and raise taxes to unsustainable levels. Many Wisconsin families, and senior citizens in particular, are already feeling the weight of Wisconsin’s tax burden, so raising taxes further is something I will not support. Many seniors are already fleeing Wisconsin’s tax structure and too many parents watch their children leave the state for employment opportunities.

Hamilton Student Raises More Than $35,000 for Leukemia and Lymphoma

In honor of a friend who is battling leukemia, Mikayla Cup has raised $35,000 with the help of her classmates from Hamilton High School. They held bake sales, cash drives, and online efforts to raise the money. Well done Mikayla!

Budget Update

It has been exactly eight weeks since Governor Evers introduced his $84 billion biennial budget. The first reaction from both houses of the legislature was that the budget was not even close to a starting point. In fact, leaders in both houses referred to the budget as a non-starter. Since that time, there have been numerous hearings and "town hall" style listening sessions across the state, allowing for citizens to weigh in on the budget. This week Governor Evers said the budget must contain provisions for accessible health care for all, a significant increase in school funding, and we must “fix the d___ roads”.  All of the Governors “priorities” are certainly important, and all were campaign promises (including no tax increases). According to US News and World Report, Wisconsin already ranks in the top ten for health enrollment and in the top 20 for overall healthcare access. Governor Walker added almost one billion dollars in the 2017 – 2019 budget for public education. I believe the legislature is more than willing to work with the Governor on road funding, but he is already proposing to eliminate many of the reforms we put into place that would allow Wisconsin to get the best value from our transportation dollars. We will continue to have discussions and debates going forward.   

Representative Janel Brandtjen
State Capitol, Room 12 West
PO Box 8952
Madison, WI 53708
Toll-Free (888) 534-0022 or (608) 267-2367
Rep.Brandtjen@legis.wi.gov | www.RepBrandtjen.com

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