MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was expected to put forward a budget Wednesday that barely resembles the ones from his first six years in office, with a huge boost for schools, sizable tuition cuts for college students and increased tax breaks for the working poor.
The shift by the famously tightfisted Republican governor has a lot to do with positioning for a third term in 2018. Democrats, and even some Republicans who control the Legislature, called his plan unrealistic and designed to boost his approval rating before another run for office.
“It’s more of an investment in Scott Walker’s re-election than it is in we the people of Wisconsin,” said Democratic state Sen. Jon Erpenbach, of Middleton.
Walker was to submit the spending plan to the Legislature on Wednesday afternoon. Although he has already promised to increase funding for education, something Democrats have long clamored for, Walker also is appealing to his conservative base. He has promised tax cuts and welfare reforms, including new requirements on parents receiving food stamps to be working or receiving job training.
Still, even Republican legislative leaders were slow to jump on board with seemingly popular increases in education spending, sharing the fear with Democrats that Walker wasn’t being realistic.
“We have to be cautious,” said Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald. “We have to be sure that we’re not doing something we’re going to have to revisit two years from now, or god forbid, sooner than that.”
The two-year spending plan is Walker’s first since his short-lived run for president and the final one before he would appear on the ballot for a third term in 2018. Walker is raising money and taking other steps to run again, but said he won’t officially announce until after the budget is done.
The budget comes after Walker previously cut funding for K-12 schools and UW, and froze tuition the past four years, while also giving them new ways to control costs. Walker credited an improved economy as allowing him to propose spending more money on education and other areas he had previously targeted for cuts.
“Of course we’re pleased that there is some reinvestment, rededication to our schools, our families, our roads,” said state Sen. Janet Bewly, of Ashland. “We are trying to make up for lost time and it’s going to be very, very difficult to catch up.”
Some Republicans have joined with Democrats in urging Walker to consider raising taxes and fees to pay for ongoing highway projects and plug a nearly $1 billion transportation budget gap. But Walker has pledged to not raise taxes and instead delay highway work and borrow more.
Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, one of the leading advocates for considering transportation-related revenue increases, said he’d be willing to delay passage of the budget from late June into October if that’s what it takes to find a long-term solution.
“If we don’t do it now, I don’t see it happening any time in the near future,” Vos said, citing fears that the growing economy could weaken.
Transportation, school funding and welfare reform will be the biggest areas where the Legislature works with Walker to find compromises, Fitzgerald said. At the same time, he said Republicans who have their largest majorities in the state Legislature in decades will be itching to make their own, unspecified “sweeping changes and more reforms.”
