Here & Now

Inside Wisconsin Politics: A Projected $3 Billion Deficit

Frederica Freyberg:
Our political reporters covered Tom Tiffany at the state GOP convention, as he was officially endorsed as the Republican candidate for governor. Tiffany was also in the mix during last week’s failed vote at the Capitol over tax relief and public school funding, purportedly calling lawmakers to kill the deal. A new report out of the Legislative Fiscal Bureau says if it had passed, it could have put the state’s budget in a nearly $3 billion deficit in a few years. Let’s hear what they had to say about it on this week’s “Inside Wisconsin Politics.”

Shawn Johnson:
I think when you’re looking at a $2.95 billion projected budget deficit at the end of the next two-year budget. Not the one we are now, but the one after that feels real to me, Anya, I mean, just looking through those numbers.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Right and, you know, the sort of important caveat is that that number from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau doesn’t take into account the fact that we are in a period of sort of remarkable economic uncertainty right now and so it says that we would have that deficit, that sort of almost $3 billion deficit were this to have passed. And that’s not accounting for potential changes to tax revenue, to the fact that there’s like a war going on right now that is affecting oil and gas prices, all these different things. And so from all of the Democrats who voted against it, and then also from the Republicans who voted against it, there was this concern about the cost of this thing, which was kind of nebulous. And so even with those kind of firmer numbers, it, you know, justifies I think, what some of those lawmakers were saying on the floor. But it also kind of points to this, again, political gamesmanship that we often see when it comes to appropriations, which is what is our money for? What is our state surplus for? Is it for things like this? Is it to have kind of in our back pockets? And so there was — that was really the contours of the fight.

Shawn Johnson:
We had a state GOP convention over this past weekend. Tom Tiffany is now the endorsed candidate. He doesn’t have to worry about a primary the way that the candidates had to in 2022, so he can focus on the general election now. And yet, Zac, we’re talking about the 2020 election here. What is Tom Tiffany talking about?

Zac Schultz:
He cannot get away from Trump’s main grievance, which is the fact that he lost to Joe Biden in 2020. And because he still has such a powerful grip over the Republican Party nationally, which we just saw in Republican primaries in Kentucky and in Louisiana Senate races, that his people have to fall in line on his beliefs or his incorrect beliefs that the 2020 election was stolen. So Tom Tiffany is still answering questions about election fraud investigations and whether Joe Biden won the election with, you know, kind of diffusing or deferring and trying to get away from it because he can’t come out and honestly say, no, of course Trump lost. That’s been warranted over and over. Every Republican group out there, from Vos to the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has already said so. And that is something that Democrats love to hear, because they will continue to hang that around his neck all the way to November as much as they possibly can. The closer they tie him to Donald Trump and these grievances from four years — six years ago now that the better off it is for them.

Shawn Johnson:
And Anya, just real quick, I mean, it seems like this is an issue where as much as he wants to go for those handful of voters who are in the middle, this is a line that he can’t cross as far as Republicans are concerned.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Yeah. I mean, I think one of the lessons from this week is that in state politics, it’s not the time if you are a Republican to be bucking Trump. And so we are seeing him sort of tie himself again to this issue. And it’ll be interesting to see how much does that motivate his Republican voters and how much does that turn off those moderate voters and energize Democratic voters.