MADISON, WI (WTAQ) — The Joint Finance Committee is taking on Governor Tony Evers budget proposal this week.
Brett Healy with the MacIver Institute says the Republican-controlled committee is likely to tear the proposal apart, and it’s going to be a fight.
“This is the governor’s reelection budget,” Healy said. “So this budget is especially important for him and his future.”
Republicans have called the Democratic Governor’s proposal a ‘Liberal Wish List’. It includes things like the legalization of Marijuana, which committee leaders already have promised to remove.
“There will be over 300 items that will come out,” Healy said Thursday. “They can go back in, yeah, if the governor can find nine votes on the finance committee that the Republicans control 12-4, so it’s unlikely.”
Healy says there will be some compromises to pass a budget and adds that the state is actually in fairly good financial shape.
“We have $762 million in the rainy day fund, that’s positive,” Healy said. “We have several accounts that have surpluses and then you have this flood of federal aid.”
Healy appeared on WTAQ’s ‘The Morning News with Matt and Earl’.
Even if the budget winds up becoming a battle that extends past the June 30th budget deadline, it won’t result in a government shutdown. In Wisconsin, if the legislature misses the budget deadline, the previous budget continues to apply.
