MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Gov. Tony Evers on Wednesday announced that $130 million in federal coronavirus relief funds will be used to help address the state’s worker shortage problem and assist unemployed people searching for a job.
The bulk of the money, $100 million, will go toward a workforce innovation program for the development of solutions to workforce challenges the state faced after the COVID-19 pandemic, Evers said.
Another $20 million will go to a worker advancement initiative that will offer about 2,000 unemployed people subsidized employment and skills training opportunities with local employers. And $10 million would go to a program that provides workforce career coaches to help people find jobs.
So Evers won’t do something that would save money and actually help the problem, like end federal unemployment enhancements early, but he will spend a ton of your money on another government program. While not actually solving anything, he will send your money to his political cronies who run programs like this.
I hate group projects. How many times have you heard that statement or uttered it yourself ? When a group project involves a group of people voluntarily coming together to achieve a common goal, they can be terrific. But more often, group projects like those in school entail a hodgepodge of people with different motivations, varying work ethics, and suspect integrity who are thrown together to accomplish an assigned task.
Every group project seems to have “that guy.” You know the one. He’s the lazy slacker with a bad attitude. He shows up to the first couple of meetings for the group project. He offers a thought or two, but they are terrible. He then proceeds to bash everyone else’s ideas before retreating to sulk for the rest of the project. He doesn’t contribute anything meaningful and disappears for days or weeks at a time. The rest of the group gives up on him and finishes the project without him.
When the project is presented and is well received, that guy is suddenly everywhere. He is taking credit for the work and acting as if every great idea were his. With shameless audacity, that guy shoves his colleagues out of the way to bask in unearned adulation for work that was not only someone else’s, but that he actively maligned.
In the great state budget group project, “that guy” is Governor Tony Evers, and his budget project teammates in the Legislature are justifiably piqued at his behavior.
While the Legislature was busy last week passing a budget that increases spending and still cuts taxes, Governor Tony Evers was busy weakening Wisconsin with his veto pen. With two vetoes, Evers retarded Wisconsin’s economic growth and opened the door to election corruption for years to come.
Anyone who has gone to a restaurant or retail establishment in Wisconsin has seen the “help wanted” signs and felt the impact of the deficit of workers in those businesses. The impact is equally great on Wisconsin’s manufacturing, agricultural, and tourism sectors. There are more jobs than people willing to take them and Wisconsin is in a state of full employment with an unemployment rate of 3.9%.
One of the reasons that more people are not applying for those open jobs is because taxpayers are paying them more to sit at home and not work through enhanced unemployment payments funded by federal COVID relief money. The Legislature passed a bill to end those federal enhancements early so that taxpayers would not pay people to stay unemployed when there are plenty of available jobs. Evers vetoed that bill. According to a survey by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, 85% of Wisconsin’s businesses support ending the enhanced benefits early because they are desperate for workers, but Evers would rather that the taxpayers pay people to not work. The enhanced unemployment benefits will end in September, but Evers will prolong the labor shortage and hold back Wisconsin’s economic recovery as long as he can. The other bill that Evers vetoed is more nefarious. The Republican Legislature passed a bill that would have prohibited local governments from accepting private money to run elections. The bill was meant to reaffirm a simple principle that something as integral to our system of self-governance as the management of elections should be run by elected officials who are responsible to the people.
What prompted the need to reaffirm this American principle was the action by several liberal cities to sell the electoral process to a liberal activist group in the last election. Last year, a liberal activist group funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who also uses his social media platforms to influence the elections, offered several liberal cities a pile of cash to “help” manage the elections. Several cities took the money and literally, in some cases, handed the ballots over to unelected liberal activists to count them.
In Green Bay, for example, Zuckerberg’s group gave the city $1 million to “help” with the election. For that cash, the city allowed the liberal activists to “help” register people to vote, direct city employees in collecting and managing ballots on election day, access secure areas with ballots, tabulate and count ballots, and even cure disputed ballots. The city of Green Bay abandoned their duty and sold the election process to a liberal activist group.
Perhaps Evers would have signed the bill if the New Berlin or Appleton had outsourced the running of the election to a conservative activist group funded by Republican billionaire Dick Uihlein. But since this is a tactic being used exclusively by leftist activist billionaires and their front groups to corrupt elections, Governor Evers was more than happy to let the practice continue as he is up for reelection next year.
Governor Evers has shown that he is not one to let good public policy stand in the way of political advantage. These two vetoes show that he is willing to prolong the economic pain for Wisconsinites and sell the electoral process to private interest groups if it will benefit him and his leftist comrades. Wisconsinites should veto him next November.
WHITEFISH BAY, Wis. (AP) — Gov. Tony Evers signed the Republican-written state budget Thursday, enacting a two-year spending plan that includes a $2 billion income tax cut while making 50 largely minor partial vetoes, saying unfinished business still needs to be addressed.
[…]
Both Evers, who signed the budget, and the Republicans who wrote and passed it took credit for the tax cut made possible by a revenue surplus.
Evers, a Democrat who is running for reelection next year, cast it as a bipartisan effort even though the tax cut was added to the budget by Republican lawmakers. Only seven Democrats out of 49 voted for the budget. Evers’ original budget would have raised taxes, primarily on manufacturers and the wealthy, by more than $1 billion.
“I could have vetoed that,” Evers said of the GOP tax cut proposal. “I made a promise to the taxpayers, to the state, we would reduce middle class taxes by 10% and we did 15%. It is a bipartisan effort.”
Republicans reacted angrily to Evers taking credit for the tax cut, with the GOP co-chairs of the budget committee calling it “laughable.”
Thee is a lot of detail at the link, but the summary is below. Thank goodness for Matt Kittle and Empower Wisconsin for following up on this. We had a problem under Governor Walker and it has gotten substantially worse under Governor Evers. It has been two-and-a-half years since Evers took office promising to fix this.
Gov. Tony Evers campaigned on shutting down Lincoln Hills School for Boys, the state’s serious juvenile offender prison, The Democrat hammered his predecessor, insisting Republican Gov. Scott Walker had failed to take action. On the campaign trail Evers declared Wisconsin needed “responsible leaders who are more focused about solving problems and protecting lives than winning elections.”
Two and a half years after Evers took office, things have gotten a lot worse inside the walls of Lincoln Hills, according to documents obtained by Empower Wisconsin in an open records request, and the governor has repeatedly argued to delay the closing of the juvenile detention centers.
While Evers and Republicans have fought over funding to replace Lincoln Hills and the Copper Lake School for Girls with regional detention centers, the governor is ultimately responsible for the safety and security of the institutions. Lincoln Hills staffers say Evers’ Department of Corrections has swept worsening conditions under the rug.
Under Governor Evers:
* Sexual misconduct incidents soared 75 percent at Lincoln Hills.
What prompted the need to reaffirm this American principle was the action by several liberal cities to sell the electoral process to a liberal activist group in the last election. Last year, a liberal activist group funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who also uses his social media platforms to influence the elections, offered several liberal cities a pile of cash to “help” manage the elections. Several cities took the money and literally, in some cases, handed the ballots over to unelected liberal activists to count them.
In Green Bay, for example, Zuckerberg’s group gave the city $1 million to “help” with the election. For that cash, the city allowed the liberal activists to “help” register people to vote, direct city employees in collecting and managing ballots on election day, access secure areas with ballots, tabulate and count ballots, and even cure disputed ballots. The city of Green Bay abandoned their duty and sold the election process to a liberal activist group.
Perhaps Evers would have signed the bill if the New Berlin or Appleton had outsourced the running of the election to a conservative activist group funded by Republican billionaire Dick Uihlein. But since this is a tactic being used exclusively by leftist activist billionaires and their front groups to corrupt elections, Governor Evers was more than happy to let the practice continue as he is up for reelection next year.
Governor Evers has shown that he is not one to let good public policy stand in the way of political advantage. These two vetoes show that he is willing to prolong the economic pain for Wisconsinites and sell the electoral process to private interest groups if it will benefit him and his leftist comrades. Wisconsinites should veto him next November.
MADISON – Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a bill Wednesday that would have barred a nonprofit group from repeating its practice of giving millions of dollars to more than 200 Wisconsin communities to help them run elections.
The Center for Tech and Civic Life gave money to cities around the country last year using $350 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. The effort riled Republicans because most of the money in Wisconsin — $8.8 million out of $10.6 million — went to the state’s five largest cities, where Democratic voters are concentrated.
Assembly Bill 173 would have prohibited local governments from accepting donations to help run elections from the center or other private groups. Any donations to the state for conducting elections would have to be equally distributed to local governments based on their populations.
Here’s what this allows… local election officials can essentially outsource the running of an election to the highest bidder. In lefty-land, this means doing what they did in Green Bay. The mayor literally handed the keys to the election boxes over to an unelected liberal interest group to “help” run the election and count the ballots. Theoretically, it means that a conservative elected official could hand over the election process to WILL or MacIver Institute to “help” run the election and count the ballots. This completely violates the principle that elected people who are accountable to the voters are in charge of our elections.
These things don’t happen in a vacuum and elections have consequences. Evers is up for reelection next year and is clearly doing everything he can to ensure that his supporters can cheat as much as possible. I hope the Republicans have an answer.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Democratic Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a Republican bill Tuesday that would eliminate a $300-a week federal bonus for unemployed people.
The bonus was designed to help the unemployed during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s scheduled to end on Sept. 6 but Republican legislators pushed the bill through the Assembly and Senate earlier this month, insisting that business can’t find workers and the bonus is keeping people from seeking work.
Wisconsin’s governor blasted the state’s senior senator Friday for giving a platform to six people who claim they’ve had adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines instead of promoting the millions who haven’t reported serious side effects and avoided sickness and death.
It’s kind of like when activists give a platform for victims of police violence instead of the millions who have been protected by police and had positive interactions with them.
Facts are facts. In the short term, there are people who have adverse reactions to the vaccines while most people are just fine. We don’t know the long term effects yet. Shouldn’t people know with facts? We want people to know that nut juice isn’t milk so that they can make an informed consumer choice. Don’t we want them to know that they might have an adverse impact from a vaccine so that they can make an informed choice?
Evers originally said he wanted to spend $2.5 billion on economic relief for families, tourism, workers and small-business owners, as well as $500 million on the continued pandemic response and $200 million on infrastructure, including broadband.
During a news conference Wednesday, Evers answered vaguely when asked about how the reduced amount would affect his plans, saying the state now has $700 million less to help it recover from the pandemic. He said the reduction “hurts” and that it may affect how much his administration can spend, but he didn’t elaborate.
Evers’ spokeswoman, Britt Cudaback, said the governor still plans to follow through on his pledge to spend about $620 million of the stimulus money on grants for small businesses, organizations working to eliminate racial disparities, tourism and mental health programs for children. But she said other amounts could change.
MADISON (WKOW) — Gov. Tony Evers said Thursday he has not been in talks with Republican leaders in charge of the legislature while GOP leaders on the committee that writes the budget said they could start taking votes on removing items from Evers’ budget as soon as next week.
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“If the question is specifically ‘is there room to negotiate on tax increases, the answer to that would be ‘no,'” Born said. “There’s a lot of stuff in this budget that are areas of agreement, things we can work on, agree with, and negotiate if that’s what people want to do in the governor’s office but tax increases is absolutely not one of them.”
Evers argued that he could issue multiple health emergencies because of the changing nature of the pandemic. The mask order first took effect in August and Evers extended it four times since then, most recently on Feb. 4 immediately after Republican legislators repealed it.
Gov. Tony Evers outlined his initial plans on Monday for some of the roughly $3 billion in federal COVID-19 stimulus funds headed to Wisconsin, saying hundreds of millions of dollars will flow to small businesses, infrastructure and continued pandemic response. The governor also vetoed a bill on Monday that would have given GOP state lawmakers more say over how the federal funds are spent.
Wisconsin is set to receive about $5.7 billion under the latest federal pandemic stimulus, with $3.2 billion earmarked for state government. The remainder of the funds will go to local governments and non-governmental programs.
Speaking at a small business in Milwaukee, Evers said he plans to spend $600 million on supporting small businesses, $500 million on continued pandemic response, $200 million on infrastructure and $50 million on aid for the Wisconsin tourism industry. The governor said his administration is working to get the funds disbursed as quickly as possible.
“At the end of the day, we’re still battling a pandemic and all the uncertainty that comes with that — workers and business owners are still filled with worry, families are still struggling to make ends meet,” he said.
Evers said the money dedicated to infrastructure development will include a “significant investment” in broadband expansion, something he and GOP lawmakers have agreed should be a major priority. The governor said announcements about which specific programs will receive funding in each broad category are to come. He noted the new business loans will “build on” an existing pandemic grant program that has sent money to about 53,000 businesses in Wisconsin.
It’s not just that Governor Evers is lying about why his Department of Health Services (DHS) undercounted COVID-19 deaths in the state’s nursing homes by nearly 1,000; it’s that he is so obviously and provably lying.
When asked this week why DHS officials quietly upped the number of nursing home deaths from 1,956 to 2,927, Evers rather perplexingly claimed that state investigators simply couldn’t figure out where thousands of COVID victims lived.
“Our local folks got lots of death certificates and death investigations that just had a street name on it,” he said. “How do we know that is a nursing home?”
This just isn’t true. If it were, then the State of Wisconsin hasn’t managed to find a home address for a staggering 37% of the people who died of COVID-19 over the past year. That’s either terrifying incompetence or, far more likely, sickening dishonesty.
Nothing says, “I care about Wisconsinites who lost their livelihoods in a pandemic” like jacking up taxes.
In summary, the changes included in the Governor’s budget would increase net taxes by $1,020,728,000 ($464,824,000 in 2021-22 and $555,904,000 in 2022-23) and would increase net fees by $17,162,700 ($7,172,900 in 2021-22 and $9,989,800 in 2022-23). In addition, it is estimated that measures included in AB 68/SB 111 to enhance the collection of current taxes would generate an additional $78,031,700 ($38,745,800 in 2021-22 and $39,285,900 in 2022-23).
As some states rollback their mask mandates, Governor Evers defended his emergency orders as tools that rely on science. The state supreme court is considering whether he has the authority to continue issuing emergency orders.
“I also am a realist…the supreme court is thinking about what goes on in this world and of course they will have the last say. But at the end of the day, it is important that people wear a mask,” the governor said.
Evers wants to spend $45 million on a new juvenile facility in Milwaukee County for 32 teen offenders and another $70 million on a juvenile treatment center at Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison.
Gov. Tony Evers’ biennial budget proposal fulfills many Democratic priorities with big spending increases, but Republicans have raised concern that the $91 billion proposal would almost entirely drain the state’s coffers — by close to $2 billion — and leave Wisconsin in a more precarious financial position down the road.
The state is projected to have a nearly $2 billion surplus in its general fund by the end of the year, but Evers’ projected budget, which includes $1.6 billion in new tax revenue from marijuana, big manufacturers and the wealthy, still reduces that to around $143 million by mid-2023.
Remember that the surplus is just projected. It may be more. It may be less. But either way, Evers wants to spend it all and raise taxes to boot.
And this is possibly the dumbest statement I’ve read today:
“It’s not necessarily inappropriate to draw down a big chunk of your reserves when you’re facing a once-in-100-years pandemic,” Wisconsin Policy Forum research director Jason Stein said. “You don’t have the reserves just to put them on a wall and admire them, but at the same time … you have to think about what’s going to be sustainable for the state budget because some of these challenges are not just going to evaporate either.”
A projected surplus is not “reserves.” Stein suggests that the surplus is some sort of rainy day fund. It is not. It is projected surplus revenue because tax collections were higher than expected and/or spending was less than expected. That money could be rolled into the next budget, used to pay off debt early, or it could also be given back to the people because we didn’t need to spend it. Evers just wants to spend it.
Then Stein goes on to suggest that it might make sense to spend it because of the pandemic. But the mere fact that we have a project surplus tells us that the government has sufficient money for expenses without drawing from any rainy day fund. While the pandemic impacted thousands of people and businesses, the government did just fine. The fact that we had a pandemic should not be used as a lazy excuse for more government spending.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Gov. Tony Evers called on the Republican-controlled Legislature Tuesday to bolster funding for K-12 and higher education and reform the state’s criminal justice systems, while delivering a state budget with $1 billion in tax increases and liberal policy priorities that GOP leaders promised to quickly kill.
[…]
Evers also proposed numerous measures Republicans are certain to reject, including allowing front-line workers to collectively bargain, which would partially repeal the Act 10 law passed a decade ago; legalizing recreational marijuana; banning the private sale of firearms; accepting the federal Medicaid expansion; and increasing the minimum wage.
His budget also would increase the legal age to vape or smoke tobacco from 18 to 21; cap enrollment in school choice programs; and allow families of fourth graders to visit state parks for free.
State employees would receive a 2% pay increase in January and another 2% raise in 2023, similar to what they got in the current budget.
Did you see what I put in bold in the excerpt? Yeah… no.
Gov. Tony Evers and his administration passed a milestone at the start of the year — the halfway point in his four-year term as governor. Two words come to mind in assessing his term thus far — ineffectual and uninspiring.
[…]
If Evers is to make a better grade for the second half of his term as governor, he will need to continue to work to find ways to forge compromise with the Legislature, which will require shelving some of his goals and ideals. He also needs to work at projecting confidence. Those are pillars of effective leadership.
