The state budget and the taxes that help finance it have a huge impact on children and families. The budget provides most of the funding for vital government services, such as education, health care, transportation, child welfare and other safety net programs.
For more detailed analysis, visit the Wisconsin Budget Project website.
Raging debates about reducing the federal deficit, as well as state spending, have reiterated a common point – health care costs are too high. Medicare and Medicaid make up about 23 percent of federal spending, and their costs are growing faster than the overall economy. Because of this, the new "super committee" will likely be looking...
The National Juvenile Justice Network has just released a policy platform on Safe and Effective School Disciplinary Policies and Practices. Sparked by concerns about school safety, in the 1990’s and into the last decade, schools implemented a variety of “get tough” policies and practices that led to a steady rise in the number of...
The state Senate wrapped up work today on a bill enabling Wisconsin to use an estimated $88 million of federal funding to extend unemployment insurance (UI) benefits for up to 13 weeks for the long-term unemployed. The bill, SB 147, could benefit as many as 40,000 Wisconsinites between now and the end of the year. Once the bill is...
For the past month, we’ve been using this series of blog posts, “31 Ways in 31 Days,” to draw attention to some of the ways the recently passed 2011-13 biennial state budget stands to affect children and families in Wisconsin. But let’s be clear: 31 is a rather arbitrary number we picked simply because it coincides conveniently with the...
Earlier in this series, we noted that the state budget is reducing general aid to schools by nearly $750 million over the biennium (see Way #1: Massive Cuts to School Funding Threaten Wisconsin's Tradition of High-Quality Education), and withdrawing more than $45 million in state support for specific programs in Wisconsin school...
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