A new Marquette Law School poll found 80% of Wisconsinites said the Legislature should have passed a budget surplus bill that ultimately failed amid concerns about a future budget deficit.
Gov. Tony Evers and Republican leaders announced the deal earlier this month, which would have tapped the state’s projected budget surplus to reduce property taxes, increase special education funding and provide rebates to taxpayers. They swiftly pushed it to a vote in the same week the deal was rolled out. While Evers and Republican leaders were initially optimistic, the bill passed the Assembly in a 61-32 vote only to be rejected by the Senate in a 18-15 vote.
Opposing lawmakers, including a majority of Democrats, expressed concerns about a potential budget deficit.
A memo released by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) last Wednesday found that the state would have faced a $2.95 billion budget deficit at the end of the 2027-29 biennium had the bill been enacted. The memo examined the effects of the bill, the spending in the current state budget and other legislation passed over the rest of the legislative session.
Without the bill, the state is projected to have $525 million at the end of 2029.
The bill included funding to boost schools’ special education reimbursement to a projected 42% in 2025-26 using $85 million and to 50% in 2026-27 school year using $230 million. There was also an additional $302.5 million for general aid to public schools, though it would have only provided property tax relief due to school revenue limits, which cap the amount schools can spend.
The bill also would have provided a $300 state income tax rebate for taxpayers whose state tax bill was at least that much in 2024 and would have eliminated taxes on tips and overtime.
Marquette conducted its survey about the bill between May 20 and 21, just a week after the measure died in the Legislature. It surveyed 454 Wisconsin adults with a margin of error of +/-5.5 percentage points.
Of those surveyed, 80% said it should have passed, 11% said it shouldn’t have passed, while 9% said they didn’t know.
The support for the measure was bipartisan with 77% of Republicans, 81% of independents, and 82% of Democrats polled saying it should have passed.
Sen. Dan Feyen (R-Fond du Lac) said in a statement that the poll was confirmation that Wisconsinites want the Legislature to address the affordability crisis. He criticized the Democrats who voted against it but did not mention his Republican colleagues who voted against the deal.
“The people of Wisconsin understand something that my Democrat colleagues refuse to: when the state collects billions more than it needs, that money should go right back to taxpayers,” Feyen said. “As I’ve said before, in divided government, compromise is a necessity. Republicans accepted that reality and worked with the Governor to put forward a bill that addressed affordability, providing both immediate and long-lasting permanent relief.”
The poll also asked whether lawmakers should have acted now or waited until there was more information next year to act on the budget surplus or deficit.
Of those surveyed, 69% said it would be better to provide the spending, rebates and school aid now, while 21% say it would be better to wait until next year given fiscal concerns.
Three Republican lawmakers voted alongside Democrats against the deal in the Senate.
Evers’ spokesperson Britt Cudaback has said that lawmakers had the 17 Republican Senate votes necessary to pass the bill before Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor, made calls lobbying lawmakers to vote against the deal.
Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield), who voted against the deal, told WISN-12 over the weekend that Senate leadership didn’t count votes before announcing the deal, thus failing to ensure there would be enough support among lawmakers to get it done.
“What happened was there were a couple of leaders in both the Assembly and in the Senate, along with the governor, who said we’ll just get it done and we’ll just push it to the floor and they’ll vote for it without talking to their caucus, which was really upsetting for me,” Kapenga said. “The governor also assumed that there were going to be some Democrat votes for this, too, so I think it was failed leadership on all three fronts.”
Evers has said that Democrats have put themselves into a “bad place” by not supporting the deal ahead of the midterm elections in which the governorship and control of the Senate and Assembly are up for grabs.
“They believe that somehow putting money back into people’s pockets that are struggling financially across the state, apparently they don’t believe that’s an issue,” Evers told WISN last week. “They’re going to say, ‘Well, we’re going to fix it next time when all these wonderful things happen after Evers is gone, and we’ll get a new governor and we’ll have Democrats all over the place.’ That’s fine. That’s a wish list, and who knows what else is going to happen, but you’re impacting kids right now.”
According to the survey, 25% of Wisconsinites said that candidate positions on the bill would be “very important” for their November votes, while 48% said it would be “somewhat important.” 21% said it would not be too important and 6% said it wouldn’t be important at all.
