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Partisans are actively hoping Janet Protasiewicz will have a role in casting a decisive vote on redistricting, school choice, voter ID and even rolling back Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10, prohibiting collective bargaining for most state employees. 

You know those decals that make your car look like it’s been hit by gunfire?

My family’s car has something like that, only more authentic: a bullet hole in the tailgate.

Social Security already is exempt from income taxes in Wisconsin. Now two Republican legislators are circulating a bill that would virtually eliminate all income taxes on retirees.

Minimum markup laws hurt consumers by making goods more costly. Wisconsin should repeal its antiquated minimum markup law, as Badger Institute has advocated for decades.

It’s telling that Gov. Evers, Sen. Larson and the rest keep using words like “the wealthy” and “rich” to talk about their targets. The Wisconsin income tax is levied not on wealth that people have saved but on income — what they earn. If you say “rich,” with its implications of inheritance or luck, you don’t have to grapple with how taxes take what someone is working for.

Examine your monthly cash flow and discretionary spending to prepare for new monthly loan expense. According to a report by Wells Fargo, the typical student loan repayment will be between $210 and $314 per month. It’s time to determine where that money will come from.

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.

Pushing back on a Gov. Tony Evers veto protecting the University of Wisconsin System’s extensive diversity, equity and inclusion infrastructure, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is asking for legislative committee approval to again remove $32 million from the system’s budget unless it dismantles its DEI programs.

The 2023-25 state biennial budget signed by Gov. Tony Evers did not include the most effective measure to address gaps in oral care access in Wisconsin — dental therapy.

Governor Evers signed a budget passed by the Legislature that includes a more than 30% starting pay raise for assistant district attorneys and assistant public defenders and more flexibility for merit-based pay raises for attorneys currently in those roles. This makes the compensation for these roles more competitive and should reduce the high rates of turnover currently existing in District Attorney and public defender offices. 

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.

Wisconsinites clearly got some wins in the 2023-2025 biennel budget. Now the task at hand is consolidate and expand those moving forward.

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?

A plan passed by Wisconsin’s Joint Finance Committee saves taxpayers $3.5 billion over two years, money that came from them in the first place because they’re currently overtaxed. Gov. Evers would do well to sign off on that plan.

If the vast UW System Diversity, Equity and Inclusion effort — which costs approximately $32 million biennially — is so necessary, why is it such a failure?

The Badger Institute supports a flat-rate individual income tax, a structure increasingly adopted by competing states. We have spent years researching options for reform that includes a single, low rate. But if that is out of the question as budget negotiations proceed, the priority should be Wisconsin’s top rate.

Seeing how often Wisconsinites have been told that public school districts are starving, it isn’t surprising that when asked to guess how much tax money districts spent per student, they whiffed. And not by a little. The most common guess was about one-third to one-half of what the Department of Public Instruction says is the real figure.

Among the bills Republicans are considering in the Legislature is one eliminating the last remnants of Wisconsin’s personal property tax. The bill, AB2, sponsored by Rep. Dan Knodl (R-Germantown), would end property taxes on everything but real estate.The move is one the Badger Institute long has advocated.

The bargain struck Thursday between legislative leaders and the governor ensures the financial sustainability of the school choice and charter school programs but that also increases the low revenue ceiling for public school districts that are on the bottom of the revenue spectrum.

“This is good day for Wisconsin, and for anyone who cares about our children – parents who want more power over their kids’ education, teachers who work so hard, and school administrators who have long worried about sustainability,” said Badger Institute President Mike Nichols.

A deal that allows both the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County to raise sales taxes also requires that 25 police officers be placed back in crime-ridden Milwaukee Public Schools.  

“This is a great victory for all the good kids in MPS schools who just want to learn, want to be safe, want a way up,” said Mike Nichols, president of the Badger Institute, which has been pushing for cops in schools for much of the last year.