WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) — Citizen Action of Wisconsin has been touring all over Wisconsin and presenting their alternative budget entitled “A Wisconsin Budget for All”. Tuesday the group made a stop in Wausau.
Robert Kraig, Executive Director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin, says they’ve found a way to improve to large issues in their alternative budget.
He said, “The idea is to show them if we close some big tax loopholes that go mainly to well-connected corporations and a few wealthy people, that we could make major new investments. So, A Wisconsin Budget for All shows, for example, we could have a free tech college education, we could raise wages for low-income people substantially.”
Kraig says the group was very surprised by some of the results of the research they did leading up to presenting the alternative budget.
“Researchers actually went to coffee shops, bars, and restaurants and talked to people and what we found actually is that people would actually like to spend more on universities, more on schools, more on infrastructure, but they feel like if they send that money to Madison it’ll basically be stolen there and go to special interests,” Kraig said.
Kraig wants this alternative budget to get people talking.
“We expect if we could actually get people talking, that it puts more pressure on elected leaders and maybe they make some forward movement and maybe that puts, even more pressure on them in the next election.”
The group made stops in Madison at the State Capital, in Milwaukee at Milwaukee Area Technical College, in Eau Claire, and expects to tour the eastern part of the state as well.
Gov. Scott Walker will present the actual state budget on February 8th.
