Here & Now

Gov. Tony Evers on His Vetoes in Wisconsin's 2023-25 Budget

Here to discuss the final budget is Governor Tony Evers. Governor, thanks very much for being here.

Tony Evers:

Thanks, Frederica Freyberg.

Frederica Freyberg:

Republicans are certainly outraged by your vetoes. One Republican senator even going so far as to say they were not the work of a rational governor but a radical. What’s your response to that?

Tony Evers:

It’s laughable. We actually came to some good bipartisan solutions during this budget, including issues around affordable housing and taking care of PFAS, and shared revenue, Good Lord. I mean we just completely made that a new system that is going to help the municipalities do their important work. Other wins, too. We’re going to continue fixing our roads and bridges. So the idea that somehow this is radical is, in my view, ridiculous. We worked hard. We worked hard to get what we could.

Frederica Freyberg:

Some Republicans, though, are saying that your veto to increase per pupil funding for the next 400 years violates the deal you made with them over school funding, that compromise of which you speak. Did it?

Tony Evers:

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I heard that and it’s a breathtaking time when I hear something that I just know isn’t true and they’re saying that. The bottom line is during those negotiations around shared revenue, we came to some agreements on the issue of the next two years for public schools. Not the next 400 years. The next two years. And so I took the opportunity during the — when I looked at the budget to make sure that we have some sense of rationalness going forward for our schools, and that includes having that revenue limit be for some time, obviously 400 years, were the digits that I had available to me, but did that violate anything? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. It’s kind of sad at this point in time, we’re reaching some agreements, and for people to go off the ledge here. Just relax, folks. I broke no promises here.

Frederica Freyberg:

And yet that levy limit increases going out 402 years. I mean, why did you do that?

Tony Evers:

To give some — well, first of all, as you know, other governors have done this also. It has — when Scott Walker was governor, he used it to bring that same number to zero, as I remember, over I think a thousand years. So it’s not unusual. Those are things that are available to a governor and he or she going forward should be able to use it just like I did. It gives our schools some notion of reality that the legislature and the governors going forward will consider public education a top priority.

Frederica Freyberg:

I don’t think very many people were surprised that you vetoed the income tax cut for the top bracket, but you also vetoed the tax cuts for the third bracket, which kicks in for couples making more than $36,000. Isn’t that the middle class that you wanted to see get a tax cut?

Tony Evers:

First of all, the middle class did get a tax cut in this, primarily in the neighborhood of $1.75 million, but that same area that you’re talking about, the same, it goes up through I think $400,000, which I don’t believe in anybody’s guesstimate would be considered middle class. The bottom line here, by doing the veto as I did, everybody got a tax cut. Everybody. Wealthy, poor, people in the middle. Mostly people in the middle got the best deal. I feel good, I feel confident about that. We’ve worked together with the legislature over the past several years to bring $1.5 billion in tax cuts, almost the vast majority of that for middle class folks in Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

So that third tax bracket goes from $36,000 all the way up to $405,000 as you mentioned, for married couples. Would you support breaking that up into separate tax brackets in order to more precisely target relief for the middle class?

Tony Evers:

Yes, and hopefully the legislature — we have some options going forward. There’s plenty of money left in our reserves, and if they want to bring something back, but if it’s the same old same old. If it’s about let’s help the wealthy and not the middle class, then that’s going to be a problem and I’ll likely veto that. But, yeah, of course, that’s a big span and I will say that $405,000 is not middle class.

Frederica Freyberg:

So as to kind of reserves going forward and the use of them, you called out childcare center funding as a disappointment. You wanted $340 million. Republicans approved $15 million. You say, again, that you left enough money in the budget for the legislature to go back in and fund that and other things like family leave, which are priorities for you. Reportedly there’s something like $3 billion to start the next budget. But why, governor, would Republicans, the Republican Legislature, spend on your priorities if they didn’t here in the first instance?

Tony Evers:

Well, they’re going to see what’s going to happen. I mean, it’s clear that we’re at almost full employment. And as I deal with childcare providers almost every single day, there’s going to be a whole bunch of them going out of business or reducing the number of children that they can take care of because it’s not a sustainable situation without some help from the state government. So as we do that, we’re going to lose people out of the workforce, and that is a big deal, not just for Republicans. It’s a big deal for Democrats also. And so, yes, I’m hopeful that they’ll take another look at that. It’s a perfect opportunity for us to do the right thing, make sure that we have a workforce that’s going to work for everybody, and move forward. I think if it’s put together in a good bipartisan way, we can make some headway.

Frederica Freyberg:

As to funding for higher education, you restored the 188 diversity and inclusion positions with a veto but said that the UW system could recapture that $32 million cut from the legislature with a workforce plan but is now Speaker Vos says after that veto restoring the 188 positions, the UW will not get the money unless it eliminates diversity programs. What’s your response to that?

Tony Evers:

Well, that’s not what the Joint Finance Committee said. They said there’s $32 million if you bring us back a workforce plan, we will consider releasing that to them. I do not believe they say a workforce plan and let’s get rid of DEI. I don’t believe that’s what was put in there, so I anticipate that the University of Wisconsin System and Joint Finance Committee, they can work it out.

Frederica Freyberg:

What about overall funding for higher ed in this budget?

Tony Evers:

It’s ridiculous. Obviously, we can’t have the University of Wisconsin System or, frankly, the technical college system, be, you know, have no increase. They have costs that go up just like everybody else. I would say that, unfortunately, where the Republicans have been for several budgets that I’ve been working on and even before, having been personally on the Board of Regents, and that is there’s like this war against higher education. It’s got to stop. If we care about workforce, we need to make sure that our tech college system and our University of Wisconsin System is strong.

Frederica Freyberg:

You and the Republic majority, as we’ve discussed, compromised on school funding and shared revenue. Is that goodwill gone now with your vetoes?

Tony Evers:

No, no. Republicans — they may have forgotten, but Republican governors vetoed things also. But, no, I don’t think so. We’ll continue to work together where we can and there’s going to be this kind of blah, blah, blah over the next couple of weeks that the sky is falling, but at the end of the day, here’s what’s going to happen. We made some progress in some really important areas. We’re going to continue to hopefully talk about areas that have been left fallow, and that includes higher education and childcare in particular, and we’ll move forward as a state. And so I — you know, I’m not going to overreact to that. We’re just going to continue working with people as much as possible.

Frederica Freyberg:

Why didn’t you just veto the budget in its entirety?

Tony Evers:

I knew that we could move forward. I knew that we could make some vetoes that would make things even a little better, and it was the right thing to do. Simple as that.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Governor Tony Evers, thanks very much for joining us.

Tony Evers:

Thanks Frederica.