Why Legislature Killed Tax Cut, School Aid Plan

Tony Evers, Robin Vos, Devin LeMahieu.

There are at least four reasons why a $1.8 billion tax cut and school aid package failed in the Legislature last week.

First, 50 of the Legislature’s 60 Democrats — all 15 Democratic senators and 35 Assembly Democrats, including the party’s Assembly and Senate leaders — refused to support a package partly negotiated and championed by retiring Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. He had hoped the deal would be the final chapter in his eight-year legacy of fighting for public schools; it would have pumped $315 million more into special education programs, for example.

Here’s the irony in those Democrats’ votes: Before he took office in January 2019, Republicans who controlled the Legislature and governor’s office passed bills limiting the powers of the incoming governor and Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul. This year, eight months before Evers leaves office, his fellow Democrats also slapped him down, politically disowning the leader of their party.

In a statement, Evers blamed the pressure from the presumed Republican candidate for governor, Congressman Tom Tiffany, and minimized the objections of 83% of Democratic legislators.

“Wisconsin’s kids and schools aren’t going to get the investments they desperately need this year because Tom Tiffany and a few Republican and Democratic lawmakers chose to blow up a bipartisan plan to invest in our K-12 schools, lower property taxes, and help working families afford rising costs, all because they’d rather do what’s best for the next election than what’s right for the people of our state,” Evers said.

“Wisconsinites feel left behind, frustrated, and disillusioned by politics these days because they think a lot of politicians in the Capitol are only here to serve themselves,” Evers added. “Today, they’re right.”

Second, the deal was negotiated by three leaders — Evers, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu — who are retiring and won’t be around to deal with any financial fallout that could have resulted from spending most of the state’s budget surplus on a pre-election package that also would have sent checks for $600 to married couples and $300 to single-income tax filers.

Because of surging tax collections, the $2.5 billion surplus is projected to grow by at least $250 million — more than enough to make it affordable when the next budget cycle starts in mid-2027, Evers had insisted.

But Senate Democratic Leader Dianne Hesselbein, of Madison, wasn’t buying it.

“This is a completely reckless proposal stitched together in a backroom deal by three people who will not be running again and won’t be here when the consequences of a multibillion-dollar deficit come home to roost,” Hesselbein said. “It’s simply something I can’t support.”

Although the Assembly, on a 61-32 vote minutes earlier, had passed the package, the Senate votes of all 15 Democrats and three Republicans killed it.

Third, the election-year ambitions of dozens of Democrats — nine candidates for governor and leaders like Hesselbein, who is plotting a Democratic takeover of the Senate in Nov. 4 elections that would make her the shot-calling majority leader — also mortally wounded the package. Two Democratic votes against it came from Madison legislators running for governor — Rep. Francesca Hong and Sen. Kelda Roys, who is halfway through her four-year Senate term.

Other Democratic candidates for governor either gave only lukewarm support or denounced the package. Their positions were partially out of self-interest; it would have spent money the next governor will need to balance the 2027-2029 budget. Only Missy Hughes, former CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., endorsed it outright.

Fourth, the three Republican senators who voted against the package — Rob Hutton, of Brookfield; Steve Nass, of Whitewater; and Chris Kapenga, of Delafield — sent a message to their party’s legislative leaders. Hutton and Nass are not seeking reelection; Kapenga, a former Senate president, is not up again until 2028. Six of the 18 Republican senators are not running again, a stunning turnover for that chamber.

“I can’t support another bad deal cut by leaders that will never face the voters again,” Nass said in a statement before Wednesday’s Senate vote. He called it an “Evers-Vos” package.

In a statement issued after the Senate vote that killed the package, LeMahieu blamed the 15 Senate Democrats for leaving “$2.5 billion sitting in a Madison bank account,” instead of helping schools and sending pre-election checks to Wisconsin residents struggling to pay bills.

“Today, we’ve seen the worst of Madison politics,” said LeMahieu, who won’t be part of the next tax-and-spend Capitol drama. It was perhaps his final shot at legislative Democrats, but the proposal would have passed if all the members of his Republican Senate caucus had supported the plan.

Steven Walters started covering the Capitol in 1988. Contact him at stevenscotwalters@gmail.com.