Act 10 Savings Top $35 Billion in 2025

No one could have predicted the immense impact that Act 10 would eventually have on the State of Wisconsin’s financial destiny when the MacIver Institute first proposed the policy back in November 2010.

We believed then, as we do now, that Wisconsin had to eliminate collective bargaining for public employees if it ever hoped to achieve fiscal stability in its state and local governments’ budgets. The idea caught on immediately, and Gov. Scott Walker introduced MacIver’s recommendation as the budget repair bill on Feb. 11, 2011. After a brutal month-long political and cultural battle, Walker signed that bill into law as Act 10. Since then, the MacIver Institute conservatively estimates it has directly saved Wisconsin taxpayers $35.6 billion through lower taxes and higher service levels.

Every year, the MacIver Institute calculates the estimated savings achieved through Act 10’s requirement that public employees pay 12.6% of their health insurance premiums and half of their pension contributions. This only captures a portion of Act 10’s impact. The law also provided local government with the flexibility to prioritize fiscal and operational efficiency, rather than union contracts. Those indirect savings are incalculable.

The MacIver Institute starts its process with the pension contribution savings, which is very straightforward. The Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds (ETF) collects and records those amounts in annual reports. Since 2012, the state has collected $13.8 billion in employee pension contributions. That’s a large part of the reason why Wisconsin is one of the only states in the country with a fully funded pension system.

Next, MacIver collects health benefit data for the City of Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, the Department of Public Instruction (DPI), and the State Health Insurance Program. Following the City of Milwaukee’s methodology, we plot a trendline of rising healthcare cost prior to Act 10. Then, we compare that trendline to actual healthcare costs to determine the savings, just like the City of Milwaukee does in its annual budget. The result this year was $21.8 billion in total healthcare savings since 2012. That doesn’t include all the local governments who don’t use the state’s health care program.

And so, Wisconsin has saved a total of $13.8 billion in pension contributions and $21.8 billion in health insurance savings, for a total of $35.6 billion.

Those savings don’t just exist on paper. They have a real impact in the real world. Thanks to Act 10, today Wisconsin is considered to be one of the most financially responsible states in the country with routine budget surpluses, a robust rainy-day fund, and a fully funded state pension system. None of this would have been possible without the passage of Act 10 back in 2011.