The best part about legislative Republicans’ proposed tax measure is that it really does cut taxes in a reasonable way for a lot of Wisconsinites, says an authoritative observer of states’ tax reforms.

The proposal, approved by the Legislature’s budget-writing Joint Finance Committee on June 12, would raise the upper limit of the personal income tax’s second-lowest bracket, meaning the tax rate on a lot of income would fall from 5.3 percent to 4.4 percent.

The move, said the Tax Foundation’s Katherine Loughead, “is a relatively well-structured way to provide relief for lower- and middle-income Wisconsinites.”

Federal taxpayers will save at least $2 million in grant money to Milwaukee PBS alone if the U.S. Senate approves a $1.1 billion defunding of public broadcasting.

Milwaukee PBS, which includes television stations WMVS (Channel 10) and WMVT (Channel 36), has kept a low profile since the House last week narrowly passed the taking back of a two-year appropriation to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes much of its funding to local TV and radio stations.

The $2 million to Milwaukee PBS is part of a total of $8.5 million a year in federal grants to Wisconsin public broadcasting as a whole that Republican leadership in the Wisconsin Legislature has said they will not replace.

While the number of traffic fatalities has fallen in Wisconsin on the whole, the number of people killed in traffic accidents in Milwaukee County has increased over the past two decades.

The number of traffic fatalities in Milwaukee County was 77 percent higher in 2024 than it was in 2002, increasing from 52 in 2002 to 92 in 2024, data obtained from the Wisconsin Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory, along with previous analysis by the Wisconsin Policy Forum, demonstrate.

Over the same period, fatalities in all other Wisconsin counties decreased by 36 percent, from 757 to 482, or 275 fewer deaths per year.

The U.S. has an opportunity to slow the growth of Medicaid, something that hasn’t been seriously tried for decades, Sen. Ron Johnson says.

Miss it, and Wisconsin and nine other states are at serious risk of caving to political pressure, expanding their Medicaid programs, and setting off a frenzy of spending on the fastest growing welfare program in the country, the Wisconsin Republican says.

As the nation tussles about how to rein in the projected spiraling costs of Medicaid, it’s remarkable how much the outlines of the fight resemble those of 2013, when Wisconsin’s Republican legislative majority and governor balked at big federal expansion of benefits.

That’s because the underlying issues touch on still-active fault lines in society. One concerns the growth of the welfare state.

“As an accounting student here in Wisconsin, and with firms that are willing to pay us $70,000 the first year out of school, why not cross state lines and work in the neighboring states? This would be a huge mistake to not get something proposed and the ball moving before the end of the summer.”

— Alexander, Janesville

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