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In its first action on the 2025-2027 state budget, the Joint Finance Committee removed 612 of Governor Tony Evers’ budget proposals. According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the committee cut $4 billion in all funds spending and stripped tax plans that would have given the state $2.8 billion in revenues. They also approved standard budget adjustments continuing the base level of services into the next biennium.
In a pre-executive session press conference, JFC Co-Chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said, “The governor’s budget was not a realistic budget. He sends us an executive budget that’s just piled full of stuff that doesn’t make sense and spends too much and spends recklessly and raises taxes and has way too much policy. We will work from base, and the first step of that today is to remove all that policy in a take-out motion and then have a motion to take us to base. And then, the work of rebuilding the budget, a legislative budget, for all of Wisconsin begins.”
Democratic members of the committee criticized stripping the governor’s budget. Rep. Tip McGuire (D) said, “People are struggling, and it’s a challenging world, and the one thing that we should not be doing, the one thing that nobody votes for their legislator to do is make their life harder, and yet that’s all we see out of the Republican Party.” Co-Chair Sen. Howard Marklein (R) said they took the same action during the last budget process and said the committee will “make reasonable investments that I believe our constituents want and we can afford.”
JFC Democratic members also proposed three amendments. One would have ensured several of Gov. Evers’ proposals to support veterans remained in the budget. Another would have implemented Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, and the last motion sought to protect several of Gov. Evers’ child care proposals. All three were rejected along party lines.
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