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Madison, Wisconsin (AP) — Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has promised tax cuts and compromised with the Republicans who control the Wisconsin legislature to increase funding for schools and local governments. Its delivery Tuesday.
Evers is delivering his fifth state address and the first of his second term at a joint session of the state Senate and Congress on Tuesday night.
In excerpts of his speech released before his speech, Evers called for more funding for K-12 schools, lower middle-class taxes, and more money in Wisconsin counties, cities, towns, and villages. Get it!
“The bottom line for me is ensuring that our community has the resources it needs to meet both its basic needs and its unique needs,” Evers said in the excerpt. There are many ways to find a compromise for
Evers seeks to increase funding to local governments through its Shared Revenue Program by 4% annually over the next two years. This makes him an increase of $91 million. His plan includes his $10 million in funds specifically for police, fire and emergency services, with the funds distributed based on population.
Republican House Speaker Robin Voss and Senate Majority Leader Devin Lemmahue discussed an alternative approach to substituting 1% of state sales taxes for shared revenues. The idea is that more sales tax means more money for local governments.
Evers has met personally with Vos and LeMahieu since his re-election victory in November, clearly unraveling the icy relationship from his seldom spoken first term. Both sides have shown signs of willingness to compromise on some issues, such as local government funding.
They are further apart in other areas such as abortion and tax cuts.
In an interview with the Wisconsin Eye ahead of the speech on Tuesday afternoon, Voss and Lemmahue said they hoped Evers would offer more room for bipartisan compromise than his inaugural address.
“He unilaterally says he wants to work with us, but he keeps pushing a lot of ideas that are not new to us.
In his speech, Evers reiterated his support for targeting tax cuts to the middle class. Republicans support a flat tax system that lowers the tax rate for the state’s wealthiest filers.
“When we implement tax cuts, and when we implement tax cuts, we do it responsibly so that we can keep taxes low now and in the future, leaving the state in debt. We will do it without being catastrophic or catastrophic, reducing priorities like public schools and public safety,” Evers said in the excerpt.
Evers opposes the Republican plan to unify the income tax rate at 3.25%, instead promoting a plan to cut taxes aimed at middle-class taxpayers. Evers also wants to spend more on his K-12 schools in the public than in the Republican Party, and another of his priorities for the Republican Party is taxpayer-funded private school vouchers. I am against expanding the program.
In his speech, Evers said the current school funding system is not sustainable, citing a growing number of communities who voted to raise property taxes to benefit schools. going to claim.
“This system is meant to create winners and losers, haves and have-nots, and make a dramatic difference in outcomes for our children,” Evers said in a prepared remark. We will use some of our historic surplus to deliver on our pre-election promises to make historic investments in our children and schools.”
An outspoken proponent of expanding school choice, Voss opposed increasing funding for education without linking it to reforms that would allow parents to decide which schools their children should attend. .
“We have a big problem and we can’t just throw money at it,” Vos told WisconsinEye.
Evers won a second term in November and pledged to advance an issue that polls show the majority of Wisconsin residents support. For example, increasing funding for schools, legalizing marijuana, repealing his 1849 state law banning abortion, and expanding his state Medicaid program. While these issues have historically been supported by Democrats, they have been largely opposed by Republicans, who have held a majority in Congress since 2011.
The state state will take place three weeks before Evers submits the two-year state budget proposal to Congress. This sets the priorities for all spending over the next two years and shows what Evers wants to do with the budget surplus. Lawmakers will spend the next five months analyzing the plan and then passing their own.
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