Browsing: Economy and Infastructure

America is choosing sides and Wisconsin — given the lurch to the left along its borders — can greatly benefit.

Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan are all now among America’s 17 thoroughly blue states where Democrats control both chambers of the legislature as well as the governor’s mansion. We are just one of 11 states with divided government, according to Ballotpedia, and Iowa is one of 22 states that is totally red.

Policymakers and environmental activists opposed to the use of fossil fuels like natural gas have pushed state and local governments to ban their use in homes and businesses without consideration of increased cost to consumers, the nature and reliability of our energy supply or technological advances impacting emissions. Other policymakers — including some in Wisconsin — have in response introduced legislation designed to ensure the continued right to use fossil fuels to heat and power buildings as well as cars and various other devices.

Thousands of Wisconsin renters caught a break when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed a moratorium on evictions in September 2020, ostensibly to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. But Wisconsin landlords like Mike Cerns had already paid the price. Cerns estimates he lost between $60,000 and $80,000 in unpaid rental income and the cost of repairing property damage from bad tenants he could not evict. “The federal government essentially stole my property during the eviction moratorium and the courts were an accessory to the theft,” he says.

In recent years, Wisconsin has been transferring money from the general fund into the transportation fund. And for many years, every projection has shown that gas tax revenue likely has peaked and henceforth will decline as cars get better mileage and as more electric vehicles hit the road.

Wisconsin’s economy shows some worrisome signs in top-line economic output and some positive trends, such as fairly large net migration from other Midwestern states, both in people and in income. And while the Badger State’s fiscal and regulatory policy mix is closer to the norm among states than it was even a decade ago, there is a clear need for additional reforms.

Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu has introduced a plan to transition over four years to a flat 3.25% individual income tax from the current four-bracket structure with a top rate of 7.65%.

He discussed the plan in this office in the Capitol Wednesday with Badger Institute President Mike Nichols in this week’s edition of the Institute’s Free Exchange podcast.

My hope for 2023 is that every legislator in Madison will talk to somebody in their district who lost their small business or their job, and ask why.

Shouldn’t be hard to find them.

Between March of 2020 and March of 2021 — the last period of time for which I could find data — 17,364 Wisconsin establishments opened and 13,698 closed, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. Almost all of those were small businesses.

The motor vehicle fuel tax, long the mainstay for highway funding in Wisconsin, is becoming unsustainable as a revenue source due to increased vehicle mileage and popularity of vehicles that use no fuel. Now is the time to consider a replacement.