MADISON, WI – Rep. Angela Stroud (D-Ashland) announced opposition to the deal negotiated between retiring leaders Speaker Robin Vos, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, and Governor Tony Evers, calling the proposal “irresponsible and reckless” and warning that it fails to help many of the Wisconsinites who need relief the most, while leaving the state ill equipped to address the mess created by 16 years of Republican rule in the legislature.
During floor debate, Stroud said:
“I cannot support a piece of legislation that spends so much state money and does so little to solve big problems.
This bill is promoted as giving single people $300 rebate checks and married couples $600, but 1.36 million Wisconsinites won’t receive a check at all. Everyone pays taxes, whether it’s sales taxes on buying school supplies, property taxes on your mortgage or factored into your rent, or the gas tax to fill up your car to go to work, we all contribute. To only consider income tax is patently regressive and morally wrong.
Meanwhile, nearly all households making $300,000 or more will receive the full rebate. How is it okay to give nearly 9,000 households making more than $1 million a year $600 each, but we can’t figure out how to help someone trying to survive on Social Security? This is not how to stabilize a society in a time of economic strain.
And what about property tax relief? If your home value is at the state median–$312,000–you’ll be saving $107, not per month, but for the entirety of the year, and not this year. Next year. If you pay your taxes through an escrow account, starting in January 2027, you’ll save $8.91 per month. That’s less than two gallons of gas today.
I know Governor Evers wants to help public schools. No one wants to help them more than our party. But not like this. Not recklessly. Not in a way that makes real, long-term solutions harder.”
