Tiffany, Nass blast ‘backroom’ budget deal

Gov. Tony Evers and Republican legislative leaders this week rolled out what they called a “blockbuster bipartisan” proposal to spend Wisconsin’s projected budget surplus on tax relief, school funding, and direct payments to residents, including $600 million for K-12 schools and providing up to $600 in direct support payments for working families.

However, the agreement took immediate fire from both conservatives and progressives as lawmakers prepared to fast-track the package through the Legislature so that Evers could sign it next week.

Leading the Republican criticism was presumptive GOP gubernatorial nominee and U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who called the deal another Madison “gimmick” that would fail to deliver meaningful long-term tax relief while preserving Evers’s controversial 400-year school funding veto.  

“Governor Evers is acting like the arsonist who wants praise for spraying a drop of water on the fire he started,” Tiffany said Tuesday on the Benjamin Yount Show. “This backroom ‘relief deal’ does nothing to repeal Governor Evers’s 400-year property tax increase. It does nothing to stop Madison’s addiction to taxing and spending.”  

Tiffany also said the proposal’s direct payments to taxpayers were insufficient in light of recent utility rate increases approved by the Public Service Commission (PSC).

“After Governor Evers’s PSC approved billions in utility rate hikes, a one-time $300 check barely scratches the surface,” he said.  

The congressman’s statements were the latest demonstration of Tiffany’s emergence as the state’s leading conservative counterpoint not only to Democratic progressives but to the current Republican legislative leadership.

“When I am governor, the gimmicks stop and lasting relief begins,” Tiffany said. “The 400-year property tax increase will be repealed. Madison’s addiction to overtaxing families will be dismantled. Surplus funds will be returned to the taxpayers where they belong, and Wisconsin workers will keep more of what they earn from the very beginning. Madison has taken far too much from you for far too long, and that ends with me. You deserve more than a drop.”

Longtime state Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) joined the criticism, warning that the proposal spends against projected revenues that have not yet been fully collected and could deepen Wisconsin’s long-term structural deficit.  

“Once again, Governor Evers and Speaker Vos have cut a closed-door deal to spend more than $1.8 billion using projected state revenues that might be collected by the end of the biennium,” Nass said.  

The senator said he confirmed with the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau that the projected $2.3 billion closing balance would consist of one-time dollars accounted for on June 30, 2027. According to Nass, Wisconsin is already projected to face a structural deficit of approximately $580 million in the next biennium even if the anticipated revenues fully materialize.  

“If Evers-Vos II were to become law, it could increase the starting structural deficit in 2027-29 biennium to in excess of $1 billion,” he warned.  

Nass also accused Republican leaders of agreeing to major education spending increases without securing reforms tied to student performance.

“It appears Evers gets a big win by getting Republicans to agree on a large infusion of cash to education, but there are no binding reforms to address the increasingly poor performance in math and reading by students statewide,” he said. Finally, Nass attacked legislative Republicans for failing to address Evers’s partial veto from the last state budget that effectively extended school revenue limit increases for four centuries.

“And more shockingly, it looks as though Evers’s 400-year veto increasing property taxes annually remains in state law,” he said. 

Nass said he was looking forward to Tiffany’s election to set things right.

“I believe Tom Tiffany will be chosen as governor by the voters to lead Wisconsin,” he said. “I know Tom Tiffany will be a better fighter for taxpayers than the current Republican legislative leadership. As of now, I can’t support another bad deal cut by leaders that will never face the voters again.”

What the deal does

The bipartisan agreement announced by Evers, Assembly speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), and Senate majority leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) would devote hundreds of millions of dollars to K-12 schools and special education while also providing tax relief and direct rebate payments to taxpayers.  

Under the proposal, Wisconsin would invest more than $600 million in K-12 schools, including more than $300 million in general school aids and more than $300 million in special education funding. The agreement would also increase the state’s special education reimbursement rate to 50 percent in 2026-27, which Evers and Republican leaders described as the largest increase in state history.  

According to the administration, the reimbursement rate would effectively double from the level in place when Evers first took office in 2019. The package also includes $350 million in property tax relief, including $300 million through school aids and another $50 million in technical college system aid intended to offset local levies.  

Additionally, the proposal would permanently eliminate Wisconsin income taxes on cash tips and overtime pay, mirroring recent federal changes but without an expiration date. State officials estimate that eliminating taxes on tipped income would reduce taxes by nearly $102 million over the next two years, while eliminating taxes on overtime would save taxpayers another $328 million during that same period.

The most visible element of the agreement, however, may be the direct rebate payments.

Under the plan, individuals who filed Wisconsin tax returns in 2024 and earned at least 90 percent of their income in Wisconsin would receive $300 payments, while married couples filing jointly would receive $600 or their net tax liability, whichever is less.  

The Evers administration and Republican leaders said the direct payments would return more than $850 million to taxpayers statewide.  

The agreement comes amid continued strong state revenue collections.

According to the administration, Wisconsin closed the last fiscal year with $4.6 billion in the state’s general fund and another $2 billion in its rainy day fund. Earlier this year, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau projected the state would still end the biennium with approximately $2.37 billion on hand.  

Administration officials now say actual revenues are exceeding even those estimates. In a joint memo released by the Departments of Administration and Revenue, officials said tax collections through April were running roughly $300 million to $350 million above January Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimates.  

Evers portrayed the agreement as proof divided government can still produce bipartisan results.

“We’ve proven time and again that, here in Wisconsin, we’re capable of finding common ground and working together to get good things done for the people of our state, and the bipartisan compromise we’re announcing today is yet another example,” Evers said.  “I’ve always said that what’s best for our kids is what’s best for our state — it’s why it’s been important to me throughout this process that we make sure our kids and our schools have the resources they need while also lowering property taxes and giving working families a little breathing room in their household budgets.”

The governor said the agreement rose above partisan politics.

“After months of hard work, I’m proud we were able to put politics aside on a plan to use a portion of our historic state surplus to do the right thing for Wisconsinites across our state,” he said.  

Vos defended the agreement as a balanced approach that returns surplus dollars to taxpayers while still investing in schools.

“Republicans have fought hard to control spending, and now we have a sizable budget surplus,” Vos said. “We’re sending it back to help families with the pressure of increasing costs, reward hard work, and to continue investing in schools to help stabilize rising property taxes.”  

LeMahieu similarly emphasized the tax-relief provisions.

“Our top priority in this process was to return the state’s surplus to those who created it: hardworking taxpayers across the state,” LeMahieu said.  

But if conservatives accused Republican leaders of enabling Democratic spending priorities, progressives accused Evers of helping Republicans burn through surplus dollars that could otherwise fund major future education investments.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate and state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) blasted the agreement as fiscally irresponsible and politically motivated.

“Today, Tony Evers and Wisconsin Republicans have emerged from behind a curtain with a proposal to spend the state’s projected surplus before it actually materializes and almost guarantee Wisconsin is facing a fiscal deficit in January 2027,” Roys said.  

Roys argued that the surplus should instead be devoted almost entirely to education spending.

“I’ve been very clear: as governor, I will invest every dime of the so-called surplus in our kids, from whom it has been stolen by 15 years of GOP budgets,” she said. “That ‘surplus’ belongs to our children, to be invested in their future — in restoring the massive cuts to public education, public higher ed, and to invest in early childhood, so that every child has what they need to thrive.”

Roys said Vos was a puppeteer who had controlled Wisconsin for a generation.

“In his final ‘screw you’ to working families, he’s trying to set the state’s projected surplus on fire — all in a desperate and irresponsible gambit to rescue Howard Marklein and other vulnerable GOP legislators from their coming defeat in November,” she said. “For decades, whenever Democrats win power, we have to fix the fiscal messes and economic calamities Republican politicians created — remember 1992, 2008, and 2020? Hell, go back to the Great Depression.”

Roys also accused Vos of using the rebates as an election-year maneuver while simultaneously creating future budget problems.

“Vos knows it’s a win-win for him,” Roys said. “Maybe this election year bribe can save a few Republican seats from flipping, and if not, he creates a budgetary crisis that Democrats will have to fix next year.”  

Former Democratic legislator and now Democratic candidate for governor Brett Hulsey defended Evers and criticized fellow Democrats for attacking the governor over what he described as the best achievable compromise under divided government.  

“We all want peace in the Mideast, and we should work for peace in the Midwest, too,” Hulsey said. “Governor Evers is our Wisconsin Democratic Party quarterback and got the best deal he could to help Wisconsin struggling families.”

Hulsey cited what he said were his more than 48 years of public service experience. 

“I will not make my opponents’ youth and inexperience an issue in this campaign, but several are showing their lack of wisdom by attacking our Governor Evers,” he said. “The perfect should not be the enemy of the good.”

Hulsey called Evers’s deal a good step forward to help families and schools struggling with what he called the high costs of the Trump/Tiffany Iran War, high gas, food, and utility bills. 

“It returns some millions of the school money former Rep. Tiffany/Trump and Gov. Walker took from our school children, workers, healthcare, retirement, UW and Technical Colleges in the 2011 Unfair Despair Act 10,” he said.

Republicans are expected to try and move the deal rapidly through the Legislature this week. The Joint Finance Committee was scheduled to take up the matter Tuesday, followed by floor votes in both chambers Wednesday.  

Evers has indicated he intends to sign the measure as early as next week.

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.