Here & Now

Making Sense of Wisconsin’s 2021-23 Budget

Frederica Freyberg:

Our next guest has seen and voted on his share of state budgets. UWM Emeritus Professor and former Democratic state senator Mordecai Lee joins us with his take. Nice to see you again.

Mordecai Lee:

Thank you, Frederica.

Frederica Freyberg:

So you had musings that Governor Evers might well veto the entire budget. That didn’t happen. Republicans had said that they worked at making the document veto-proof. Is that what happened here?

Mordecai Lee:

I think that’s part of the explanation. Even though they tried to write the language so it would be very hard to do partial vetoes and they didn’t give him very many options, he still could have vetoed the whole budget. He could have tried to get Joe Biden to hold off on revoking the federal dollars, the billions of dollars. But I think when it comes down to it Governor Evers does not love politics and he doesn’t love fighting. And even though the Republicans in the Legislature in a sense enjoy confrontations, enjoy fighting, he just doesn’t want to. Two years ago he could have vetoed the budget and he didn’t. This year he didn’t either. But the slickest move he did is even though he had very few options, the slick move was he took credit for the tax cut.

Frederica Freyberg:

That was slick.

Mordecai Lee:

For those Wisconsinites and insiders who think that Governor Evers is a lousy politician, I got to tell you, taking credit for something that you didn’t really do is about as great a political move as you can imagine. So I think he handled it pretty well given that he had really a weak hand. You know, in politics you have to play the hand you’ve been dealt. You can’t change your cards. And I think he maneuvered out of it pretty well, and I think the Republicans are sort of frustrated.

Frederica Freyberg:

Well, you really think he can take credit for those? I mean, it was a Republican-written budget. They started from scratch. And that was what they did with it.

Mordecai Lee:

To insiders, this was a win for the conservative Republican ideology of government. This was their budget. They didn’t let him get a whit of anything. They can feel, as insiders and from the point of view of political science, that for them it was a win. But from the perspective of politics, of getting credit, generally speaking in politics the voters look to the chief executive, the president, the governor, the mayor rather than looking at individual legislators or the Legislature as an institution. So I think the voters will give the governor when he runs for re-election more of the credit than they will to the Legislature.

Frederica Freyberg:

I was going to ask you, in terms of the political messaging around this document, who do you think does better?

Mordecai Lee:

I think there’s no doubt that in terms of messaging, because, after all, politics is about spin. It’s about impressions. It’s not about substance. I think the governor wins. Here’s why. He’s running for re-election and he says I gave you a tax cut. And then whoever wins the Republican nomination for governor says, no, you sort of really didn’t. All you did was sign a Republican budget. That does not fit on a bumper sticker. And politics in the end is the spin of the message. And so I think he wins. And if anybody’s in a tough position, it’s really the Democrats who are running for re-election to the state Legislature. Most of them voted against the budget. He signs the budget. They probably felt that he had just knocked the stilts out from under them. But nonetheless, what does the Republican Legislature say? You voted against the budget and you shouldn’t get credit for the tax cut. I just don’t think that will wash in politics. In terms of the substance, Republicans won. The Legislature won. Conservatives won. In terms of politics, I think Democrats won.

Frederica Freyberg:

Interesting. Meanwhile, what do you think of this budget in this time of federal COVID money and a windfall of tax revenue? Does it strike you that the spending and tax cutting was well deployed?

Mordecai Lee:

Well, it’s true that when the governor introduced his budget and included some tax cuts and some tax increases, the situation six months ago was very different. And now there’s just this flood of money, both to the state and from the feds. So I think it’s a different situation. And in a sense Tony Evers showed how fleet-footed he was to adjust to the new situation. But the pressure from Republicans will be, again, keep cutting the budget, look how big our surplus is.

Frederica Freyberg:

Mordecai, we leave it there but thank you for your insight, and very nice to see you again. Mordecai Lee from UWM, emeritus professor. Thank you.

Mordecai Lee:

Thank you.