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.
Higher education in Wisconsin was hit hard by the two-year state budget Governor Walker recently signed into law. While the UW System received significant cuts, legislators and the Governor made that up in part by providing for a 5.5% tuition increase for in-state undergraduates at system schools in both 2011-12 and 2012-13. At the same...
Wisconsin Shares is a child care subsidy program that helps working families afford quality care for their children while they are at work. Funding for the Wisconsin Shares child care subsidy program was cut from a base level of $342 million annually to $297.7 million in FY12 and $297.3 in FY13. But it could have been a lot worse; most...
Part of the budget bill’s strategy for closing the deficit while freeing up money for highways and tax cuts is to transfer $37 million per year from the federal block grant known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The budget and budget repair bills reduce by $111 million over three years the TANF funding that is...
Not only does the budget make $467 million in unspecified cuts to BadgerCare, but it establishes a new process for making fundamental policy changes that provides little to no legislative or public input. The bill includes a sweeping and unprecedented shift in decision-making authority from the Legislature to unelected officials in the...
A well-educated workforce is more important than ever to the state’s economic future. Yet this budget cuts nearly $750 million in general state aid from the public school system over the biennium. As a result, we risk weakening Wisconsin’s commitment to our public K-12 education system and jeopardizing educational opportunities for the...
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