Browsing: Spending and Accountability

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.

There are numerous ways Wisconsin could move to a flat income tax while benefitting Wisconsinites across the income spectrum. The most obvious solution is to flatten the rate while increasing the standard deduction, as proposed by the Tax Foundation and the Badger Institute in the July 2022 report Tax Reform Options to Improve Wisconsin’s Competitiveness.

Flummoxed by a staggering amount of money and by guidelines for how to spend it, Wisconsin counties and cities are spending tens of millions of dollars of American Rescue Plan Act funds to try to administer American Rescue Plan Act funds.

Approximately 30% of the revenue in Wisconsin’s current two-year budget comes from the federal government — and that doesn’t include billions and billions of dollars sent to the Badger State to ostensibly get us through the pandemic.

Awash in federal bailout cash, some Wisconsin cities ask for a property tax hike 

Turns out, as it always does when you look at where federal tax dollars end up in this country, Wisconsin is bringing up the tail end in the scramble for COVID cash.
January 13, 2022

By now, the health emergency has little to do with it

Wisconsin voters could make 2023 a watershed year for oversight of currently unchecked spending of billions of dollars of federal funding flowing into the state.

Federal dollars drove personal, small bankruptcies down, but Chapter 11s were flat and could spike

As streetcar ridership and funding dwindle, alderman warns of long-term fiscal burden

Context and Trends

How Wisconsin policy punishes low-income families for getting married – and what to do about it
February 2019

How federal grants are depriving us of our money, liberty and trust in government – and what we can do about it. This book by the Badger Institute urges states to push back.

A policy brief from the Tax Foundation and the Badger Institute.

Economists from Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute for Public Policy have determined through economic modeling that Wisconsin would benefit long-term from further tax cuts. Yet, they’ve found, Wisconsin doesn’t just suffer from high taxes. It suffers from the wrong tax mix.

The problem is far too severe to be solved by increasing taxes on the wealthy or by cutting the bureaucracy. In other words, nothing that resembles business-as-usual will close Wisconsin’s looming budget hole.

The state’s budget problems are due to the cumulative effect of bad budget practices which have persisted for the better part of the past decade, in good and bad economic times.

As Wisconsin’s debt load continues to grow, the tax burden for Wisconsin families and businesses will grow right along with it