New Budget’s Tax Cuts Called Both ‘Great’ And ‘A Huge Mistake’

Gov. Scott Walker says the budget bill he signed into law in Kenosha County on Sunday closely parallels the priorities of his administration, despite GOP-led changes made to the governor’s original spending plan.

In a 20-minute speech that preceded the actual signing, Walker highlighted the two-year budget’s tax cut, two-thirds of which lowers income taxes.

“This is a great budget. A great budget for the taxpayers, for the hard-working taxpayers of the state of Wisconsin. This budget includes nearly a billion dollars worth of tax relief: for individuals, for small business owners, for key industries.”

Speaking to an invitation-only crowd at Catalyst Exhibits in Pleasant Prairie, a manufacturing company that recently moved here from Illinois, Walker repeated his reference to “hard-working taxpayers” but never specifically mentioned the middle class. The budget’s impact on middle-class taxpayers was Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca’s main theme during a later-in-the day, budget-reaction session with reporters.

“The governor doesn’t want the middle class to know that well over ten times the benefit will go to people [earning] over $300,000. It’s less than ten dollars a month for the average working family. And we know that is not going to have a very strong stimulative effect. The governor made a huge mistake in that regard.”

The Kenosha Democrat accused the governor of squandering golden opportunities by not using the estimated $650 million budget surplus to invest more heavily in education and in tax cuts for people who need it the most. Sunday’s ceremony ended with the audience sampling kringle that had been sent over from bakeries in nearby Racine, the country’s kringle capital. The budget includes a provision that makes kringle the state’s official pastry.