For immediate release June 5, 2013
Contact: Bob Jacobson, 608-284-0580, ext. 303
Joint Finance Budget Marked by Missed Opportunities, Dubious Choices The Wisconsin Council on Children and Families is disappointed that the Joint Finance Committee did not improve the budget proposed by Gov. Walker. Like the Governor’s budget, the Joint Finance version fails to take advantage of opportunities to improve the health care landscape in Wisconsin; retreats from years of progress on child care and early education; compounds recent blows to public K-12 education by diverting desperately needed resources to private schools that are not held accountable to established educational standards; and makes our tax system less fair with tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy while leaving in place recent tax increases imposed on lower-income households. “We are troubled by many of the choices made in the Joint Finance budget,” said Ken Taylor, executive director of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families. “The Committee is squandering an opportunity presented by the Affordable Care Act to get more people covered by health insurance, choosing instead to cover fewer people at greater cost. They are squandering an opportunity to improve the quality of child care statewide, choosing instead to siphon off money and use it for unrelated spending. And by failing to roll back cuts to the Earned Income Tax Credit and Homestead Credit, they are squandering an opportunity to help struggling families and seniors, choosing instead to leave those increases in place while implementing a tax cut that doesn’t benefit them at all and mostly helps wealthier Wisconsinites. Looking at this budget, we see many missed opportunities to address the pressing needs of those hardest hit by the recession, and choices made that mainly benefit the wealthy few and harm Wisconsin’s most precious resource, our children and families.” Child Care Money Siphoned Off for Other Uses Joint Finance approved cutting $35 million from the Wisconsin Shares program that helps lowincome working families pay for child care. The decision missed a great opportunity to improve the quality of early education for these children. Rather than strengthening the YoungStar quality rating and improvement system and repairing a seven-year freeze in child care payments, the vote shifted that $35 million—plus a few million more from other programs for low-income people--to other uses. The cut was approved despite strong research that high-quality child care helps reduce gaps in school readiness and achievement.
(more)
WCCF-2
“It’s disheartening to see lawmakers employ what amounts to an accounting trick to transform federal dollars intended for low-income families into general revenue that’s being spent on things like highways and tax cuts for the wealthy,” Taylor said. One Hole in BadgerCare Closed by Ripping Some Bigger Ones Open Joint Finance accepted Gov. Walker’s proposal to make childless adults with income below the federal poverty line eligible for BadgerCare while cutting the income eligibility threshold for parents in half, from 200% to 100% of the federal poverty level. Several objective analyses have concluded that this plan will result in significantly higher costs to the state but fewer adults with health insurance. Joint Finance also approved the Governor’s resurrection of several changes to BadgerCare – changes that were disallowed by the federal government when they were passed in the previous budget – that could result in nearly 30,000 children losing their coverage. Another 150,000 kids could see the range of covered services shrink while the copays and premiums their families must pay increase. These changes would go into effect when the federal law preventing them expires in 2019. “The dollars are there to fix the remaining gaps in BadgerCare, but for reasons that have nothing to do with fiscal responsibility, the Committee is taking the path that is both costlier and riskier for the health of our families. This is not an abstract concern; studies show that when fewer people are insured, more people die. So it is not an overstatement to say that this is a matter of life and death,” Taylor said. Toward a Less Fair Tax System The income tax cut passed by Joint Finance is even larger than the one Governor Walker included in his budget proposal. The tax changes are structured in such a way that higher-income tax filers receive most of the benefit, while those at the bottom of the income distribution receive no benefit at all. Meanwhile, two tax changes in the last budget that actually increased lowerincome Wisconsinites’ tax burdens—cuts to the Earned Income Tax Credit and elimination of adjustments to the Homestead Credit for inflation—were left intact. “Income inequality has been growing fast, and these tax changes are just going to accelerate that trend,” said Taylor. “A massive income tax cut will also mean inadequate resources for public education and services that all Wisconsinites depend on. This version of the budget leaves working families out in the cold in both ways.” ###
