Vos Says Assembly Republicans Support $87 Million UW System Cut
System sought $855 million increase in its budget. Cut could cause campus closures.
Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, right, awaits Gov. Tony Evers’ State of the State address Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
The powerful speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly said Wednesday that Republicans in his chamber support cutting the budget for the Universities of Wisconsin by $87 million.
While lawmakers have yet to unveil details of their higher education budget, the remarks by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, highlight the chasm between the budget the UW wanted and what the Legislature is willing to give them.
Rumors of the cut had been floating around the Capitol since at least Tuesday, when Republicans who run the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee pulled the UW budget from their scheduled agenda.
Asked at a Capitol news conference Wednesday whether his caucus supported the $87 million cut, Vos answered directly.
“It does,” he told reporters.
Last year, the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents approved an $857 million budget request. Gov. Tony Evers proposed a smaller but still substantial $697 million increase in the UW budget he presented to the Legislature in February.
GOP lawmakers have consistently called Evers’ overall budget unrealistic, and as they’ve voted on pieces of their own spending plan, they’ve approved less funding for a variety of state agencies than the governor requested.
But they’ve still increased state spending in areas from K-12 schools to prosecutors. The UW budget Vos said was endorsed by his Assembly Republican caucus could amount to an actual cut at a time when Wisconsin’s general fund has a $4.3 billion surplus.
Vos told reporters they’d have to “wait and see” if that’s the budget the Joint Finance Committee approves.
“It’s not about cutting money,” Vos said. “What it is about is getting some kind of reforms to the broken process that we currently have.”
Vos said there was still “too much political correctness” on campus and not enough respect for political diversity.
“We want to ensure that whatever happens on campus, it is a free exchange of ideas,” he said. “That’s the basic basis for what the university should be.”
Should the budget cut happen, it would hardly be a first for the UW System, which saw cuts in the hundreds of millions during the administrations of former Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, and former Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat. But those cuts happened during times when the state was facing budget shortfalls, which is not the case now.
Already, Democratic lawmakers have sounded the alarm on the potential cuts. Speaking to reporters a day before Vos made his remarks, Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, said it should be a “nonstarter” for Democrats.
“With a $4 billion surplus, there is no excuse for making cuts to the university,” Roys said.
The Joint Finance Committee rescheduled its debate on the Universities of Wisconsin budget for Thursday. The full budget would eventually need to pass both chambers of the Legislature before it goes to the governor’s desk.
That task could be more complicated in the Senate, where Republicans hold an 18-15 majority. Already, Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, has hinted he’ll vote against the budget, and Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, told CBS-58 in Milwaukee that he’s willing to hold up its passage to get the cuts he’s looking for.
Evers has the power to rewrite portions of the budget with his partial veto pen, but it’s harder for governors to put money back into the state’s spending plan than it is to take money out. The governor could theoretically veto the entire budget, but such a move would be practically unheard of in Wisconsin.
Vos has used the UW budget as leverage in the recent past. Two years ago, he withheld approval of UW raises and building projects until the Board of Regents agreed to new limits on campus diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Editor’s note: WPR is a division of UW-Madison.
Robin Vos says Assembly Republicans back $87M cut to UW budget was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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