Senate GOP passes rewrite of Evers' child care plan, turning it into tax cuts

 

MADISON, Wis. (CBS 58) -- Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate passed a bill Tuesday that substituted tax cuts and tax credits in place of direct state funding for child care providers and universities.

Senate Republicans made drastic amendments to a special session bill Democratic Gov. Evers called in August. The governor's plan proposed spending more than $1 billion in state funding on child care and workforce initiatives:

• $365 million to extend the "Child Care Counts" and "Partner Up!" programs, which provide funding to day care providers for payroll and operations costs and for employers to pay for their workers' child care spots, respectively
• $243 million to launch a paid family leave program. Eventually, employees and employers would pay into the program with the goal of making it self-sufficient by 2026
• $197 million to build a new engineering building on the UW-Madison campus
• $66 million to the UW System with the goal of offsetting rising costs due to inflation
• $40 million for the Wisconsin Technical Colleges System

Republicans in the Senate amended the bill to strip out those proposals, and instead inserted a series of their own ideas for making child care more affordable and making the state more attractive to young workers:

• Cut the state income tax for the third, and largest, bracket. For single filers, the income tax rate would've been reduced from 5.3% to 4.4% on all income between about $27,000 and $304,000 per year.
  • For a single filer making $50,000 a year, that would've amounted to about $600 in annual savings
• Increase the amount of the child and dependent tax credit
• Increase the maximum tax deduction allowed for private school tuition 

You can read the nonpartisan Legislative Council's full breakdown of both the Evers bill and GOP amendments here.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) defended the counterproposal, which the Evers administration called "unserious," during floor debate Tuesday.

"To address the workforce shortage in Wisconsin, we don't need to grow the size of government. We simply don't," LeMahieu said. "Or make pandemic-era subsidies permanent."

LeMahieu referred to the "Child Care Counts" program, which provided direct funding to providers. On Monday, Evers announced he was committing an additional $170 million to the program, which would keep it funded into the summer of 2025. 

The money comes from the state's share of federal pandemic aid. According to tracking provided by the governor's office, Wisconsin had more than $540 million remaining as of June 30.

Senate Minority Leader Melissa Agard (D-Madison) said it was reasonable for Evers to avoid dipping into that account because Democrats and Republicans were able to compromise earlier this year on a sweeping bill that boosted shared revenue funding for local governments.

"The governor hoped that the Legislature, the legislative Republicans would be willing to hear the child care providers, the business community, as well as families and experts and do the right thing," Agard said. 

State Sen. Dan Knodl (R-Germantown) said he believed it was deceitful of the Evers administration to push for the Legislature to act on child care when it knew all along it'd be able to extend the program.

"I think that shows [Evers was] disingenuous on his initial proposal when he knew he had the dollars there to work with," Knodl said.