Browsing: Spending and Accountability

A state Department of Health Services decision to take a year to remove ineligible people from Wisconsin’s Medicaid rolls — much slower than many other states — will cost federal and state taxpayers an estimated $745 million.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated this week that people who filed for unemployment insurance during the pandemic stole somewhere between $100 billion and $135 billion in benefits — just a portion of the estimated fraud across all federal pandemic programs.

Wisconsin doesn’t have to send back a single dime of the federal aid it has already received, budget experts told the Badger Institute.

Many SNAP recipients avoid healthy foods and spend a large percentage of their benefits on sugary beverages and prepared desserts, according to Angela Rachidi, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and visiting fellow at the Badger Institute.

Our governor, you likely have heard by now, is the talk of the nation for using his unique veto power to essentially try to lock in tax increases and big spending until sometime close to Armageddon.

Using his partial veto power, Gov. Tony Evers removed the Legislature’s first steps on tax reform for Wisconsin, canceling a simplification of Wisconsin’s income tax rates and a reduction in the rates covering much of the middle class and most of the state’s businesses.

When and why did bringing internet access to every home and business in Wisconsin become the sole province of government, rather than the marketing mission of established private internet providers?

Badger Institute education consultant Jim Bender, testifying in favor of Assembly Bill 305, answers a question on choice and charter school accountability measures from Representative Kristina Shelton (D-Green Bay).

Wisconsin and the other 49 states are positively swimming in broadband funding, all of it the result of the Biden administration spending bacchanal.

“Drowning” might be a better word.

As the Wisconsin Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee begins budget deliberations, Gov. Tony Evers is pushing for a $31.6 billion budget for Medicaid over the next two years, a $4.2 billion biennial increase. The $27.4 billion being spent on Medicaid in the current two-year cycle already represents nearly 30% of all state spending.

Tucked away in Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed budget is nearly $3 million for a new cabinet-level chief equity officer and 18 new equity officers assigned throughout state government departments and agencies. The governor’s request comes at a time when diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs are under fire in higher education, business and in government for fundamental unfairness and divisiveness and a failure to achieve their intended goals.   

Wisconsin’s FoodShare is supposed to be a short-term safety net program. But redistributionists have used the pandemic as an excuse to grow government involvement in one of the most basic aspects of human life — how individuals feed themselves — in an upward trajectory detached from meaningful metrics on need or economics.

Gov. Tony Evers has asked that Wisconsin spend another $750 million to expand broadband in the state without knowing the current status of nearly $100 million in broadband projects paid for with federal pandemic funds.

The public is unlikely to ever know how the state Department of Administration came to decide how to allocate and spend nearly $4 billion from three federal pandemic emergency spending bills.

Questioned by a sometimes frustrated Joint Legislative Audit Committee Tuesday at the Capitol, DOA leaders acknowledged that many of the decisions about how to allocate money to state agencies and local governments were made in phone conversations and emails with Gov. Tony Evers and his staff that were not documented.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has added the $500 million to his 2023-25 budget to address a “burgeoning crisis” in mental and behavioral health, particularly among Wisconsin children, created by the impact of the pandemic. In his State of the State address, he declared 2023 the Year of Mental Health.

The Legislative Audit Bureau criticized the state Department of Administration for its lack of openness in how it is deploying $5.7 billion in federal health emergency funds granted to Wisconsin.

The audit report, released Wednesday, comes months after the Badger Institute first called for a comprehensive audit of all state spending of funds provided through the CARES Act, American Rescue Plan Act and the Investment and Jobs Act.

On Dec. 14, the Badger Institute submitted the following comments to Gov. Tony Evers’ statewide listening session tour on the 2023-25 executive budget.

Using billions of emergency pandemic bill dollars to plug gaping holes in their budgets, local governments across Wisconsin and the country are setting themselves up to ask for tax increases or slash services as basic as police and fire protection when the federal funding runs out. 

The Federal government has sent billions of dollars in COVID relief funds to Wisconsin. These taxpayer dollars have been distributed with little oversight or accountability. Do you believe government at all levels should be transparent about who receives this money and how it is being spent?

Twenty months after Congress passed a bill that rained $2.53 billion down on Wisconsin, the governor’s office in sole charge of administering the funding, as well as  legislative audit and budget officials, have almost no idea of how all that money is being spent.