Rep. Gae Magnafici: Legislature’s Historic State Budget

It’s been a year since Governor Evers took his red veto pen to our State’s biennial budget bill. Going back to the 2019 - 2021 budget, Governor Evers proposed billion dollars of tax increases, which included raising the gas tax. And again, Governor Evers proposed in his 2021 - 2023 biennial budget consists of another one billion dollars in tax increases. Both times Republicans had to rein Governor Evers’ typical massive government spending. In this session, Republicans crafted a budget with over $3.4 billion in tax cuts. Sadly, right before signing the budget, Evers chose his liberal wishlist over hard-working Wisconsinites and removed over a billion dollars of tax cuts.

Instead of raising taxes on hard-working Wisconsinites when working families can least afford it, I listened to our community and returned tax dollars to residents while funding our shared priorities. We significantly invested in roads, healthcare, broadband expansion, and numerous other services.

The Legislature’s budget invested over $85 million more into state and local highways. A $700 million increase in K-12 funding from the previous budget brings the total K-12 funding to a record $13 billion. Allocated over $600 million new dollars into healthcare to ensure residents can access needed care, whether it’s mental healthcare, hospital services, dental care, substance use treatment, or long-term care. We also provided over $125 million for broadband expansion, and for the next budget, I will continue supporting our Statewide broadband expansion program and investing in our local roads in Northwest Wisconsin and across the State.

We see that inflation rose to 9.1% from January to June 2022, and Governor Evers has repeatedly proven that he can’t figure out that massive government spending leads to inflation. While the Legislature defended Evers’ tax hike, Wisconsin residents still feel the weight of inflationary pressure driven mainly by the Federal Government’s tax-and-spend policies. I am committed to fighting against tax increases to ensure Wisconsinites keep more of their hard-earned money.