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Chris Kapenga Says "No" to Budget
Wisconsin’s former Senate president says he’s a No vote on the still-being-written state budget.
Senator Chris Kapenga wrote on X on Monday that he’s not ready to give Gov. Tony Evers another chance to use his veto pen to re-write another state budget.
"Wisconsin's state budget expires on June 30. There are three options based on what I am seeing: 1. Accept the Governor's budget. The Governor made clear he wants significant spending and tax increases. The requests don't even make sense... It's a non-starter," Kapenga wrote.
Gov. Evers has never said just how much more he wants to spend, but the governor said he walked away from budget negotiations with Republican leaders because they were not willing to spend millions more on the University of Wisconsin system and public schools in the state.
But Kapenga said that doesn’t mean Republican lawmakers aren’t looking to spend more on the UW and K-12 schools.
“2. Support the budget being drafted by members of Joint Finance. This version also appears to be adding unnecessary spending without any reforms that would improve the budget process or dig into wasteful spending currently in place,” Kapenga added. “An additional major risk in doing this is the State Supreme Court has allowed the Governor to essentially do whatever he wants with his veto pen. No bueno.”
Kapenga said, to him, there is only one thing to do: Not vote on a budget.
“3. Allow the existing budget to carry over. It would be the lowest spending increase in a decade and have no veto pen risk.” he wrote.
Wisconsin law allows a budget to carry over. There wouldn’t be any work stoppages, or missed paychecks, but the state would operate at the same funding level for the next two years that it has operated at for the past two years.
“Unless something improves, I am going with option #3,” Kapenga closed with on X.
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