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JFC Co-Chairs Lay Down Budget Markers in Letter to Evers
By Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance staff | February 3, 2021
From WisPolitics.com …
The GOP co-chairs of the Joint Finance Committee today warned Gov. Tony Evers against introducing another budget like his first one that was “full of tax increases, excessive spending and divisive non-fiscal policy.”
The letter comes two weeks ahead of Evers introducing his budget Feb. 16 and fresh off the Legislative Fiscal Bureau releasing new projections showing the state is now expected to take in $1.2 billion more in revenue than what the guv’s administration had expected just two months ago.
Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, gave Republicans credit for the state’s solid financial footing. They also knocked Evers’ first budget for including “many divisive, non-fiscal policy items that should be discussed through the normal legislative process such as eliminating drug testing for welfare recipients, in-state tuition for illegal aliens and gutting common-sense, pro-growth reforms like right to work and the repeal of the prevailing wage laws.”
The letter otherwise didn’t include any specifics of items the two lawmakers wouldn’t accept if they were included in Evers’ budget. Two years ago, Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee stripped out a string of policy proposals and a provision to accept federal money to expand Medicaid as one of their first actions on the budget. Evers told WisPolitics.com in a late December interview that he planned to introduce Medicaid expansion again; Assembly Speaker Robin Vos in a WisPolitics.com event last week again rejected Medicaid expansion.
An Evers spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.
The letter included several references to focusing on the details in putting together the next budget.
Dem Sen. Jon Erpenbach, a JFC member, tweeted, “The party who almost cost the state $49 million per month in food benefits funding should not be lecturing others on paying attention to the ‘details of life’…”
Read the letter here.
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