(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s new budget is set to spend $114.2 billion, a 15% spending increase compared to last biennial budget, according to a report from Wisconsin’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
The number is an increase from the $111.1 billion initial estimate as the Wisconsin Legislature is expected to take up the budget today. The Senate is schedule to meet on the budget this morning, followed by the Assembly.
The last Wisconsin budget represented an 11% increase from the prior budget while the 2022-23 budget was a 7% increase from the prior budget, MacIver showed.
The budget process accelerated after Legislative leadership and Gov. Tony Evers reached a compromise Monday and the details of that compromise were part of a budget passed by the state’s Joint Finance Committee with a 13-3 vote on Tuesday.
The fiscal bureau budget analysis shows that Wisconsin will have more than $46 billion in general purpose revenue, $33.7 billion in federal revenue, nearly $16.6 billion in program revenue, $14.8 billion in segregated revenue and $3.2 billion in bond revenue over the two-year period compared to $99.3 billion in total revenue in the last biennial budget.
“This is only true because we spent a lot of the surplus instead of issuing debt so it looks like “spending” vs saving taxpayer money with less interest,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos wrote on social media in response to MacIver’s chart on budget spending increases.
The $3.2 billion in bonding is above the $700 million in bonding in the last budget, $1.7 billion in 2022-23 and $1.9 billion in 2020-21, MacIver showed.
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Wisconsin Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, said that he did not receive a copy of the budget until 8:55 a.m. on Wednesday.
“8:54am: Just received the 421-page, $111.1 BILLION budget for the first time, which I’m supposed to read through and vote to approve in the next hour,” Kapenga wrote on social media. “Looks like a Nancy Pelosi-inspired approach: approve it first, and then we can read it!”