In their Sunday Crossroads section, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel yesterday published a column co-authored by Karen Royster of the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future and WCCF Executive Director Ken Taylor. The column notes that those who argue for tax cuts as the best strategy for battling the recession, and yet complain about the ineffectiveness of the federal Recovery Act at creating jobs and stimulating the economy, need only look a little closer at the Act; it’s chock full of tax breaks for just about everybody in the state. The piece outlines about $5 billion worth of tax cuts that are benefiting people in Wisconsin. This includes such breaks as the Making Work Pay credit, which is helping each of Wisconsin’s 2.2 million workers. Because the money from this credit just shows up seemingly magically in their paychecks, the money tends to go unnoticed by a lot of recipients.

WCCF believes that the Recovery Act has done a lot of good things for the state’s economy, perhaps none more important than the $2 billion in direct benefits state residents have already received. The tax cuts noted in this column are one of many channels through which the federal government is working to cushion the impact of the recession on people across Wisconsin and the rest of the country.