Here & Now

Capitol Insight: Johnson Breaks Down Walker Budget Proposal

Scott Walker:

The state of our state is strong and the state of our budget, well, it’s outstanding. We are working and winning for Wisconsin.

Zac Schultz:

That was Governor Walker at Wednesday's budget address. We should mention that Wisconsin Public Television is partially funded by state dollars. So is Public Radio. And that brings us to tonight’s “Capitol Insight.” We welcome back Wisconsin Public Radio’s Capitol Bureau chief Shawn Johnson to talk about the governor's budget. Thanks for being here.

Shawn Johnson:

Thanks for having me.

Zac Schultz:

I want to start with another clip from the governor's speech in which he sums up his impression of this budget.

Scott Walker:

Overall our common sense reforms brought us here to the point where we have a significantly better budget outlook. We call this the reform dividend. And wow, as the Fiscal Bureau pointed out. That’s a lot of money.

Zac Schultz:

Governor Walker says, “That’s a lot of money.” Where is it being spent?

Shawn Johnson:

Yeah. It is a lot of money. I’m not sure the Fiscal Bureau said, “Wow, that is a lot of money,” but that is, compared to his previous budgets, this is the most you’ve seen the governor come out of the gates proposing to spend on public schools. The increase in per-pupil funding is taking up the bulk of it. Roughly $200 increase in each of the tiers of the budget. So to put that in perspective, it’s more than the Department of Public Instruction was asking for. So in that context, it’s a lot of money.

Zac Schultz:

And that’s not the only place he’s spending money, either. I mean, the University of Wisconsin system’s getting an increase in their budget and other places. I mean, as Todd Berry told us after the budget, President of the Taxpayers Alliance, the governor is spending all of the money that’s in the budget, too, spending down the reserves.

Shawn Johnson:

Yeah. He starts out with a surplus and ends with very little money at the end of the budget to kind of address all these constituencies that you haven’t really seen the governor address in this way in previous budgets. It’s not that he would not talk about schools. Certainly that wasn’t the case. He always has said that his Act 10 was about helping schools, gave them the ability to, you know, more freely decide how to spend their budget. But in previous budgets, his first budget, for example, he cut roughly $800 million from schools. In his previous three budgets, he’s cut the University of Wisconsin system. He would increase them by either by $100 million or roughly $140 million depending on how you score it in this budget. So a change of tune in a variety of areas for Governor Walker, and, you know, we are under different circumstances now. The economy is in a different place than it was back in 2011, the national economy, the Wisconsin economy. We also have a gubernatorial election right on the horizon, 2018 election, in which many people believe that Scott Walker is going to run for a third term.

Zac Schultz:

Yeah. And Governor Walker’s had Republicans in control of the legislature his entire time in office and this session Republicans increased the majorities, but that doesn’t mean complete harmony at the capitol. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has been very blunt in his request for more transportation funding and Governor Walker said he’ll veto any increase in the gas tax that the Assembly may try and put in when they get the budget in their hands. Let’s watch Speaker Vos’s reaction at the end of this clip while Governor Walker was talking about transportation funding in the budget address.

Scott Walker:

Our budget includes more funding for local governments to fix roads and bridges and potholes than they’ve seen in more than a decade and a half. It also includes the largest amount ever, ever for the rehabilitation of state highways.

Zac Schultz:

Now, that was not a very subtle eye-roll when you’re sitting right behind the governor on public television.

Shawn Johnson:

No. It’s kind of unheard of for a speaker from the same party to react to something the governor is saying in that way on that stage. You might be tempted to kind of write it off as, whoops, he didn’t mean to do that, but then you look at everything else that Robin Vos said on the day the budget came out. He was at the Wisconsin Counties Association meeting that morning, very clearly wanted to send a message there. We had a quote from the speaker. He said, quote, sometimes I think that folks forget that we are co-equal of the governor. He gets to put the budget out, but it’s not like we just salute. He used that word again later when talking about the governor. We’re not going to just salute. He said that the governor was trying to buy off local governments with this increase in local road aids at the expense of a cut to state funding for road projects like the one in Speaker Vos’s district. So he’s not being subtle here. He’s coming out saying pretty firmly that he wants changes to this budget specifically as it pertains to transportation.

Zac Schultz:

And he’s not the only one. Usually the budget address is filled with applause lines and standing ovations. And this one should have been too with–he has a lot of tax cuts were in here. This is red meat for the conservative base. But we actually saw a relatively lukewarm reception from both parties. Clearly Democrats aren’t happy with just about anything that Governor Walker proposes, but even the Republicans were slow to rise on a lot of soundbites that sounded like they were waiting for an applause line.

Shawn Johnson:

Yeah, take for example, the tuition cut is probably the biggest example of something where the governor probably feels like he’s got this populous message that he wants to roll out there. The tuition freeze has been popular with Republicans lately. The tuition cut would seem is not at least with Republican legislative leaders. They feel like that the money that the state would spend backfilling that tuition cut or the revenue that the university would lose could be better off spent somewhere else. And so they’ve said they’re not onboard with that. But even the income tax cut. I mean, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, though not as outspoken by any means as Vos this week on the governor’s budget, said that he didn’t care for that income tax cut, thought there was a better way to get bang for your buck if you’re going to cut taxes.

Zac Schultz:

So what does this mean in terms of how long this budget will take a pass? Obviously, it goes to the Joint Finance Committee next. Then each chamber has to pass a version. They could even have dueling version there which is extremely rare for one-party control.

Shawn Johnson:

Yeah. When Republican control began in Wisconsin, they got budgets done by July 1, which is when the next fiscal year begins. You don’t have to do that in Wisconsin because, you know, the current budget will carry over to the next budget if you don’t have a new one in place. So that pressure is not exactly there. But they’ve done it. You saw that start to erode last session over transportation. Republican lawmakers didn’t like what the governor put out there. It took them a while to come to terms. You heard Speaker Vos this week say it’s not my goal, but I'll take it to October if we have to, basically throwing it out there that he’s willing to stand his ground in some type of a dispute over transportation funding. Seems unlikely that Republican-controlled legislature and governor’s office would take this fight to October, but, you know, again, this is a message that the speaker wants to send early in negotiations.

Zac Schultz:

And you’ve mentioned it before, but a lot of people are calling this a re-election budget. And Governor Walker has been relatively clear without coming out and saying it that he’s going to run for a third term in 2018 and this would appeal to a lot of the base that he has in southeast Wisconsin, but also maybe a new base that Donald Trump opened up when he ran for president and won Wisconsin.

Shawn Johnson:

Rural Wisconsin. You see hints of that all over this budget, from the way that he would include money specifically for rural schools, schools with declining enrollment, schools with high transportation costs. The way that he includes some money, not much by the speaker’s standards, but some money for local governments to repair local roads, which are in bad shape compared to other states and getting in worse shape here in Wisconsin. Those seem like nods to part of the state that has become more important politically just in this last election. If you look at how Donald Trump won Wisconsin, it wasn’t by just dominating southeast Wisconsin, which has been the path to victory for Republicans in previous years. It was by winning this swath of smaller counties, rural counties. And so that’s a constituency that I think the governor wants to make sure he addresses.

Zac Schultz:

We've only got about a minute left, but we’ve heard him use some of those phrases we heard from Donald Trump. I haven’t checked the record but I don’t remember Scott Walker talking about winning nearly as much as he has since Donald Trump won.

Shawn Johnson:

Yeah. Working and winning for Wisconsin made ten appearances in the governor’s budget speech. He mentioned it–and that’s a 24-minute speech. Clearly he wants to hit that home. He said the same thing in his state of the state speech. You’re seeing it in his campaign material now, too. So it does seem like he’s kind of borrowing from what’s worked for Donald Trump in that regard.

Zac Schultz:

What role do Democrats have to play in this budget if any? The last time around, on Joint Finance the Democrats were in play to help release some additional bonding for some road projects. Do they have a small unsung role to play in this process?

Shawn Johnson:

I would think practically speaking it’s all about message for them. You know, probably they’re going to try to position themselves as the Scott Walker alternative going into 2018 and they got to find a way to do that. There is a chance they could become relevant if — and it’s a big “if” — if Republicans decided they wanted to try to override a governor’s veto on transportation for example. They’d need democratic votes but that’s something Republicans have not been willing to do so far during their control of state government. It seems unlikely that they’d want to do that now.

Zac Schultz:

Shawn Johnson, thanks for your time.

Shawn Johnson:

You're welcome.