Collin Roth | WILL Director of Communication

Read WILL’s analysis before the legislature votes

With the legislature’s Joint Finance Committee scheduled to start voting on Governor Evers’ proposed budget on Thursday, the debate is about to come to a head. To be fully prepared with research you can trust, WILL has authored a number of timely, comprehensive studies and articles on various portions of the budget.

Take a look at the work WILL’s legal and policy experts have done on the Evers budget proposal and what it would mean for the State of Wisconsin.

Medicaid Expansion

The Impact of Medicaid Expansion: Examining the cost to consumers and the net impact on Wisconsin: A WILL and CROWE study concluded that Medicaid expansion would result in increased costs to families with private insurance – as much as $700 per year for a family of four, resulting in a net cost to Wisconsin of $400 million. Also referenced in The Hill.
A Response to Critics of WILL’s Medicaid Expansion Study: Our response to the critics who believe that Medicaid expansion is “free” and underestimate the costs to the private sector.

Regulatory Reform

How Evers’ Budget Empowers the Executive and Regulatory State: A budget with less transparency for state agencies, a return of “Sue and Settle,” and more power to the federal government.
It’s Time to Repeal the Minimum Markup Law: The government should have no role in artificially inflating the price of goods. A partial repeal is estimated to save Wisconsinites more than $350 million per year on gas alone.

K-12 Education — Overall

WILL’s Deep Dive into Governor Evers’ K-12 Budget Proposal explains the impact of nearly every proposal and how Evers would “end school choice as we know it.” Watch CJ Szafir and Libby Sobic discuss Evers’ budget on WisEye’s Newsmakers.
Governor Tony Evers’ tries to turn back the clock on education reform, Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “As states like Tennessee and Florida push forward new broad-based education reform initiatives that deepen, strengthen, and broaden school choice, Wisconsin can ill afford to move in the opposite direction.”
Poll of Evers’ Budget and K-12 Education Policy: Majorities are opposed to Evers’ freeze on vouchers, charter moratorium, and spending more money on public schools with no accountability for results.
A Roadmap to Student Achievement: WILL’s K-12 Education Reform agenda on how to improve student achievement.

K-12 Education — Spending

Truth in Spending: An Analysis of K-12 Public School Spending in Wisconsin: Our analysis sets the record straight on school spending and explains why Evers’ plan is unlikely to lead to better test scores for students.
Will Flanders in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on what the research actually says about Tony Evers’ proposals: “A meta-analysis of about 400 studies by Eric Hanushek of Stanford University finds no relationship between spending and student outcomes.”

K-12 Education — School Choice

Evers’ K-12 Budget Will Hurt Wisconsin’s Most Vulnerable Students, RightWisconsin. Why the voucher freeze is a disastrous idea.
Evers’ Education Plan Hits District Benefitting From Open Enrollment, RightWisconsin. Evers’ budget creates a disincentive for schools to participate in Open Enrollment and hurts Wisconsin’s largest school choice program.
Evers’ Backdoor Plan to Freeze School Choice, RightWisconsin. The voucher freeze gets all the headlines but Evers is pushing several red-tape requirements that would devastate private schools in the choice program.

The Budget — Overall

In 2020 the road to the White House runs through Wisconsin (and Democrats there are moving far to the left), FoxNews.com: “Even in the polite Midwest, the energy among Democrats is not for moderation, compromise or solving problems – the very things Evers promised. It’s for expanding and empowering government, enacting job-killing tax increases, and hurting the private sector.”

For more information on Governor Evers’ budget, please see our friends at the MacIver Institute (who have done terrific fiscal analysis on the budget) and the Badger Institute (who recently published The High Cost of Increasing the Minimum Wage in Wisconsin).

Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty: Governor Evers’ budget: What you need to know

Upcoming Events

WisPolitics luncheon panel on the women’s vote this election

Newsmaker Luncheon with former Wisconsin Gov. Scott McCallum

2024 WisPolitics Polling Summit

WisPolitics Luncheon with Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway