Eight Fake Highlights from Tony Evers’ 2025-27 Budget
Once again, it’s budget season in the great State of Wisconsin! 2025-27 Budget Season, to be exact! Gather the kids, call your neighbors, and prepare to be underwhelmed.
Budget season means it’s time for Governor Evers to propose a bunch of things that sound good, wait for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to laugh and say “nah,” then shrug and dump more public resources into voucher schools and charter schools, rounding it up to a progressive win in Evers’ press release.
But it’s easy to miss some things in a long, complex, binding document that will force armed cops into Milwaukee public schools, build more juvenile prisons around the state, and cut taxes but, like, Democratically. Because let’s be clear – these are the kinds of things that will survive negotiations with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos:
Expanding highways around the state – including I-94, which famously destroyed and divided black communities in Milwaukee. Presumably in honor of legendary city planner and segregationist Robert Moses
No taxes on cash tips earned by servers, a reform recently made famous by noted labor policy expert President Donald Trump. This will be featured prominently in campaign ads during Evers’ wildly unsuccessful 2026 bid for reelection
A 20 foot by 10 foot commissioned oil painting of Governor Evers and Speaker Vos negotiating the entire budget without a single member of the legislature’s Democratic leadership present, or meaningfully included in the process. [Artist’s rendering]
And here are some of Evers’ budget proposals that probably won’t survive negotiations, but you should give him credit for them anyway, for some reason:
A Medicaid expansion, including an expansion of postpartum care that Wisconsin would be the last state in the nation to make, that Governor Evers has now proposed unsuccessfully for the 4th time. That’s one more than a 3rd time, which is “charmed,” making this time “extra charmed!” Trying is hard, ok??
Establishing February 19th, the day he proposed his 2025-27 budget, as Why Are You Being Mean to Me, Governor Tony Evers, Haven’t You Noticed I’m Still Technically Not A Republican, Also I’m Clearly Sundowning So Lay Off Day
A new, $500k program to audit health insurance companies’ repeated denials of claims, which definitely won’t disappear from the budget after a single phone call from new UnitedHealthcare CEO [redacted]
$15 million to support passenger rail service in Wisconsin and study new passenger rail routes, which will pay for approximately ½ of a train and 30+ extremely excited consultants
The very occasional use of the phrase “inseminated person,” the top result when you Google “evers budget criticism” as of February 25, 2025. This language was proposed to ensure that parents have clear parental rights, regardless of their genders – but that’s barely been covered, because our media is full of dupes, bigots, and cowards.
In conclusion, a fun fact: Governor Evers can do (at least!) the following things to mitigate harm with the negotiated 2025-27 budget:
1) Governor Evers can use his partial line item veto to remove some bad things –an extremely flexible power that very few Governors share. He has previously used this to do a fun stunt on public education that did not actually fix public education funding, while giving many the impression that he did, maybe the perfect summary of his Administration so far. He could publicly threaten to veto anything the legislative Republicans add to his budget without a hearing, for example. I just made that up – and it will probably be more forceful than anything Evers actually does over the next few months.
2) Governor Evers can refuse to sign the negotiated budget into law, essentially extending the terms of the current, existing budget. This will not shut down Wisconsin’s government, and anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong or lying. We should absolutely consider this a valid option and demand for any final budget that further entrenches/expands bad investments in charters and vouchers, continues underfunding special education in public schools, or adds more beds and more chances to imprison people.
In a sense, it’s already too late: Evers has repeatedly betrayed his commitment to public education by signing bad budgets and revenue deals into law, and he’s already negotiated himself down to a 60% special ed reimbursement demand in this budget —a fraction of what our public schools need, quite literally. But never let him tell you he had to do any of it, or that he has to sign this one into law. We reserve the right to say “no” to another shitty budget.
