Sometime in the next week the Legislature will debate the state’s response to the devastating impact of the Coronavirus pandemic. Yesterday Republican legislators released a preliminary list of the items that are likely to be in the bill they plan to introduce. That list showed that their actions will be a far more modest response to the current health and economic crisis than the wide-ranging budget and policy recommendations made by Governor Evers.
The Governor’s proposals contain substantial new spending initiatives, using a combination of new federal revenue approved by Congress, new appropriations from state revenue, and tapping part of the state’s uncommitted balance of funds from the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) block grant. The Republican plan is still in flux and rather sketchy, but appears to rely primarily on the increased federal funding for the pandemic, in conjunction with some budget cuts and funding shifts.
Kids Forward and our Wisconsin Budget Project staff have prepared three documents summarizing the Governor’s proposals:
We will be following this legislation closely because it has extremely important implications for the capacity of Wisconsin’s health care system to perform effectively during the current crisis, and for cushioning the extreme economic hardship being caused by the pandemic, especially for people furthest from opportunity.
This crisis illustrates how deeply we depend on one another. And it has become very apparent over the last few weeks that the pandemic is exacting the heaviest toll on low-income Wisconsinites and communities of color, because the virus is amplifying long-standing disparities in Wisconsin. How the Legislature responds to the pandemic next week will say a lot about whether state lawmakers want to combat the growing disparities or are willing to let them continue to grow.
|
