Surplus plans come up. Property tax cuts? Schools? REBATES?

In the last few days, there's been quite a bit of discussion at the Wisconsin Capitol in regards to what should be done with the state's new $2.5 billion budget surplus. This includes the release of an email where Governor Evers told Assembly Speaker Robbin’ Vos about a K-12 schools and tax cut deal that he would be OK with.

The email shows Evers’ staff offered to sign one bill that includes the guv’s priorities of $200 million to increase reimbursements for special education and $450 million for general school aid, which would drive down how much districts can raise through property taxes to cover their costs.

In exchange, his staff offered support for putting $550 million into the school levy tax credit, which offsets some of what homeowners would otherwise pay in property taxes for schools. The offer also included $97.3 million toward exempting cash tips….

According to the email, GOP leaders had rejected Evers’ call to make reimbursing special education expenses sum sufficient.

The state budget included a nearly $505 million increase in special education through a sum certain appropriation. That means that the amount of money for special education aid is capped and districts will receive a prorated amount to reimburse their costs from that pot of money.

When the budget was signed, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau projected the boost in state money would result in a reimbursement rate of 42% in 2025-26 and 45% in 2026-27. But DPI notified districts in November that the interim proration rate for 2025-26 is 35% after costs in 2024-25 increased by 9% rather than the expected 4%.

Do we got a deal?

And Vos indicated this week that he and the other Assembly Republicans might be OK with something similar to that package. To the point that Vos backed away from demands that Evers get rid of his "400-year veto" guaranteeing an increase in available resources for public schools.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, reiterated Feb. 11 that he will not make a relief package contingent on a repeal of Gov. Tony Evers' budget veto that provided school districts with revenue increases for four centuries – something Vos previously said would have to be "part of the discussion."

"Look, I think the 400-year veto is wrong. But I also think that the most important thing for us is to make sure that the surplus is given back to people to help deal with rising property taxes, rising electric costs and all the associated things dealing with inflation," Vos told reporters, adding that he won't require a veto repeal "as the only way that we get a deal."

Vos said his office had a "good meeting" with Evers' staff the previous day to look for areas of agreement as they seek to use some of the state's projected $2.5 billion surplus to offset soaring property taxes.

As I’ve said before, it’s silly for Republicans to try to hold hostage the $325 per student increase for K-12 schools, since Evers won’t change that total for next year, and because a future Governor and Legislature can change the amount of schools’ revenue limits whenever they agree to do so.

So Vos seems to be throwing that tactic away, and (at least publicly) wants to be seen working with Evers on the property tax reductions. But it looks like Vos’s counterpart in the other house of the Legislature has his group going in a different direction.

The same day, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, said Senate Republicans had a "great caucus" on the issue, working on "fine-tuning" where its members stand.

LeMahieu told CBS 58 earlier in the day that "in order to do anything for school funding or running it through school aids, we're going to need to repeal the 400-year veto."

In addition, LeMaheiu and other Senate Republicans have a different idea for how to use the surplus funds.

Senate Bill 1 will provide Wisconsin families with rebate checks up to $1,000.

Madison- Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) made the following statement regarding the introduction of Senate Bill 1, which will provide married-joint income tax filers with a $1,000 income tax rebate and provide all other filers with a $500 income tax rebate:

via GIPHY

I’m not going to give you the spin LeMahieu is giving as to why, but I do have a question. Did Senate GOP staffers check out this post I made? (hilarious on multiple levels if true) :P

The income tax rebate bill is already set for a committee hearing on Thursday. It looks like the rebate would be based on who filed in Wisconsin in tax year 2024, and here’s how people would get that money.

The department of revenue shall identify the taxpayers who are eligible to receive a rebate...and the amount of payment due each taxpayer. The department of revenue shall certify the allowable amount of the rebate to the department of administration for payment by check, share draft, or other draft drawn from the appropriation account under s. 20.835 (2) (cd). The department of administration shall make the payments under this paragraph no later than September 15, 2026.

The department shall establish procedures for taxpayers who do not receive a rebate or receive less than the full amount for which they are eligible under this subsection to file a claim for payment by December 31, 2026. The department of revenue shall establish a portal on its Internet site for these individuals to file a claim for payment. No taxpayer may make a claim for a payment under this paragraph after December 31, 2026.

Getting the payments out by Sept 15 would mean Wisconsinites would get a benefit faster than having to wait for the effect to show up on their property tax bills in December, which is why I’ve advocated for this type of rebate - although I’d base it on 2025 tax bills vs 2024, unless that proves too difficult to get that information lined up in the time period between May 2025 and Sept 2025.

The drawback of using a rebate is that none of the state funding goes to school districts, which doesn’t solve the concern about how to keep increasing amounts of property taxes from paying for K-12 education. Which means 2026’s property taxes would still be set up to be high, and it still (correctly) portrays Senate Republicans as a group who don’t want to fund community schools.

It’s interesting to see Senate GOPs go out on this island of income tax rebate in opposition to both the Assembly GOP and Governor Evers, and I’d encourage Senate Dems to try to split the difference – agreeing with some kind of income tax rebate while also adding some state funding to K-12 schools. It’s also always fun to see Dweeby Robbin’ Vos get faced by his own party members in the Senate, and that’s all the more reason for Dems to get their names on possible tax relief packages, to be seen as a part of the solution while the GOPs flail around.

With maybe a month to go in the session before the GOP adjourns for the Legislature’s 10-month paid vacation, let’s see if something gets worked out. And let's see if the WisGOPs wreck the chances of any tax relief by fighting amongst each other, which would make it even more likely that they’ll have no power at all at the Capitol this time next year.

Don't buy the headline. The job market still sucks for most of America

Wednesday’s US jobs report was heavily anticipated for two reasons. Not just because it would give us a look at how the jobs market started 2026, but also in how we would find out more information about 2025’s job situation. That’s because the January jobs report also includes the benchmark revisions for the previous year, and a preliminary revision from last Summer indicated that there would be a reduction in earlier job growth of more than 900,000 jobs through Spring.

Sure enough, the revisions were sizable for 2025, resulting in already-weak US job growth to sink near zero.

…[the Bureau of Labor Statistics] shaved off more than 400,000 jobs from the 2025 employment gain, leaving the U.S. with just 181,000 new jobs in 2025, compared to an initially reported 584,000.

The preliminary revision of 2025 jobs data is part of an annual process. Each year, the agency recalculates the previous year’s employment changes based on new federal data on the U.S. population. In 2025, BLS subtracted almost 600,000 jobs from the 2024 total employment gain.

Trump administration officials sought to downplay the importance of the January jobs numbers in the days leading up to the report’s release; top White House economists attributed an employment slowdown under Trump to the administration’s mass deportations, which they say lower the number of jobs the U.S. is required to create.

The 15,000-a-month average for last year is the worst non-COVID figure for job growth since the Great Recession was happening in 2009. And as you can see, most months of 2025 were revised down.

But don’t worry, those 2025 troubles are all behind us, because the January jobs report was awesome!

The US economy added an estimated 130,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate ticked down a tenth of a percentage point to 4.3%, according to new Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

That’s far stronger than the 75,000 net gain economists had projected, and it’s only 51,000 jobs shy of the entirety of the jobs created in 2025, BLS data shows….

“The labor market appears to be stabilizing,” Heather Long, chief economist with Navy Federal Credit Union, told CNN. “That’s the first step to recovery.”

January marked the strongest month of job creation since December 2024.

Uhh, let’s hold off onto whether this portends a great 2026 for the jobs market, and not just because 130,000 jobs added in a month would have been a subpar number for most of the last 15 years. Once you look closer at the numbers, it’s clear that this isn’t that good of a jobs report.

The first way this jobs report masks an overall still-lousy jobs market is because many more people in January weren’t working compared to December. It’s just that the dropoff wasn’t as much as what the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects for that time of the year.

Job change Dec 2025 – Jan 2026
Seasonally adjusted +130,000
Not seasonally adjusted -2,649,000

So the “growth” merely reflects lower-than-normal post-Holiday and cold-weather layoffs. Which we might expect given that unemployment claims were still low through mid-January, and that all those layoffs that were announced last month won’t result in people losing their jobs until later this year.

The second reason that the January jobs report isn’t as great as a six-figure gain would indicate is because of how lopsided it is toward a small number of sectors.

That “all other jobs” category accounts for nearly 4 out of 5 jobs in this country. Which means 80% of American workers are seeing no job gains at all in the sector they work in.

An absurd amount of the job gains coming from health care and social assistance has been a trend for well over a year, but that hot streak will likely be threatened as more Americans lack health insurance in 2026 and ICE likely harms an industry where 1 out of 6 workers are immigrants.

And that 33,000-job gain in construction isn’t from a boost in activity as much as it is a lower-than-normal January decline of 213,000 jobs. So let’s see if that reverses in the coming months if Springtime construction hiring doesn’t meet modeled targets (especially with Trumpist ICE raids may well hamper the availability of a sizable portion of that workforce).

The January jobs report reiterated that most of our real economy was struggling as 2026 began. And average hourly wage growth is still mediocre at 3.7% over the last 12 months, (although there was a not-bad 0.4% increase for the first month of the year). Until we see that wage growth start growing on a consistent level , and until more than 1/5 of the US jobs market starts seeing any kind of significant growth, I don’t see why consumers would stop being so down on the economy.

Weak retail sales for Holidays and lower wage growth as 2025 ended

We're still a bit delayed on some economic data, which means we had to wait until today to find out that consumer spending at stores slowed as 2025 ended.

U.S. retail sales were unexpectedly unchanged in December, putting consumer spending and the overall economy on a ​slower growth path heading into the new year.

The flat reading in ‌retail sales last month followed an unrevised 0.6% increase in November, the Commerce Department's Census ‌Bureau on Tuesday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast retail sales, which are mostly goods and are not adjusted for inflation, would rise by 0.4%.....

Retail sales excluding automobiles, gasoline, building materials and food services fell 0.1% in December after a downwardly revised 0.2% gain in November. These so-called core retail sales correspond most closely with the consumer spending component of ⁠gross domestic product. They were previously reported ​to have advanced 0.4% in November.

December's drop ​and the downward revision to November's data could prompt economists to trim their fourth-quarter estimates for consumer spending and GDP.

And yet the DOW Jones Industrial Average hit its third straight record high on Tuesday. Because with Wall Streeters, bad news for the real economy is good news for them, since it’ll be cheaper to take on even more debt.

The weak number appeared to lead to an increase in bets on interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve. While most traders still expect the Fed to hold steady next month and April, those majorities are shrinking. Meanwhile, over 75% of traders now expect rates to be lower by June.

The consumer data lays the ground for Wednesday's all-important January jobs report, in high focus following last week's signs of softening in the labor market. The latest Consumer Price Index reading is then due on Friday to give a look at inflation pressures, as the Fed continues to balance both sides of its dual mandate.

And based on the flop sweat and excuses from Trump’s Treasury Secretary and other Administration hacks this week, those jobs numbers will likely suck.

Peter Navarro: "The jobs report comes out tomorrow. We have to revise our expectations down significantly for what a monthly job number should look like ... Wall Street has to adjust for the fact that we're deporting millions of illegals out of the job market."

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) February 10, 2026 at 8:19 AM

Or, maybe having immigration allows for higher job growth, higher demand and higher economic growth, which tends to help almost everybody. Funny how that concept eludes TrumpWorld.

We also found out on Tuesday that employers have been reducing their raises for employees, with the increase in the Employment Cost Index declining to 0.7% for the 4th Quarter of 2025. Which means the higher wage growth of the post-COVID era has now receded back to pre-COVID levels.

It’s not like the crackdowns in immigration are translating into a boost in wages for those who are left in this country, so throw Navarro's BS to the side. But it does help lead to record profits when prices keep going up by the same amount, so Trump/GOP donors like that part.

But don’t worry, all of those Trump-donating corporations will be using their multi-billion dollars in new tax cuts to hire and pay employees. You know, as soon they get done laying off thousands of the ones they have today.

CBO budget stuff shows deficit was dropping before Tax Scam 2.0 shows up on books

As tax filing season starts, the Congressional Budget Office got their monthly update on how the federal budget is doing. So 4 months in, what do the numbers look like?

That's quite an increase in revenues. What's behind that?

Individual income and payroll (social insurance) taxes together increased by $124 billion (or 9 percent).
• Nonwithheld payments of income and payroll taxes increased by $77 billion (or 33 percent) relative to payments in the same period in fiscal year 2025. Amounts collected so far this year consist of estimated payments of 2025 taxes and final payments of 2024 taxes that were made after the end of the 2024 filing season.
• Amounts withheld from workers’ paychecks rose by $42 billion (or 4 percent), a reflection of rising wages and salaries.
• Individual income tax refunds were $7 billion (or 15 percent) less than during the same period in 2025, boosting net receipts. Most refunds typically are paid during the period from February through May.

Before you say "the newest tax cuts are working!", I'll remind you that we haven’t seen the effect of GOP Tax Scam 2.0 show up much in income tax revenues. That won’t happen until the refunds come in for the next few months, because the Feds are still withholding taxes at pre-Tax Scam 2.0 levels. It's the jump in non-withheld payments that has led to an overall increase in money coming in, and it reflects the continued growth in the stock market that we saw in 2025 (Uncle Sam is not caring if it makes sense for the market to go up).

But we are seeing the difference from Trump 2.0 when it comes to the other main sources of government revenues.

■ Customs duties, including tariff revenues, collected this year were more than four times the amount recorded in the first four months of last year, an increase of $90 billion.

■ Receipts from corporate income taxes decreased by $22 billion (or 16 percent). The enactment of the 2025 reconciliation act allowed corporations to take larger deductions for certain investments in 2025, thereby reducing some estimated payments and offsetting the underlying growth in such receipts.

That increase in tariffs would be around $270 billion at a yearlong, which would keep a lid on an otherwise-rising deficit IF it’s not given away on some Trump/GOP “stimulus check” stunt. Also, keep an eye on the declining tax bill from corporations, and the distortions that may cause for the overall economy (both positive and negative).

On the spending side, the "Big Three" of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are all up 8-9% from last year, as is interest on the US debt. But many other parts of the federal government lowered their spending in the first four months of this fiscal year.

The Homeland Security stat is interesting, given all of the deployments by ICE in recent months. But the report indicates that's because FEMA is spending much less on reimbursements for natural disasters than they were in the last four months of the Biden Administration. Read into that what you will...

So before tax filings and refunds began en masse , the US budget deficit was in line to go down in Fiscal Year 2026. But let's check back in four more months, after those refunds have been processed, and see if Trump/GOP Tax Scam 2.0 is starting to have this country bleed even more red ink, and if there's an indication as to who is getting the big refunds, and who's stuck paying the bills.

More layoffs coming and less jobs available. But hey, DOW 50,000!

Late last week, we got a couple of indications that the US jobs market was in rough shape. The first sign came when we found out there was a huge increase in layoff plans by companies.

Layoff announcements ballooned in January, hitting the highest level for the month since 2009, according to a Thursday report from the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

That should come as no surprise, given tens of thousands of job-cut announcements in recent weeks from the likes of Amazon, UPS, and Pinterest, as companies claim the need to make room for investments in artificial intelligence, reorient business plans in uncertain times, reduce bureaucracy, or compensate for the rash of pandemic-era hiring….

Indeed, companies' hiring plans, at 5,306 in January, were the lowest for the month since Challenger began logging hiring plans in 2009.

Meanwhile, Challenger tracked 108,435 layoff announcements from US firms in January, more than double the 49,795 cuts announced the same month last year. It was the highest January total since 2009, when 241,749 layoff plans were reported.

Along with the layoffs, later on Thursday we found out that companies haven’t been looking to fill or add positions either.

Job openings dropped in December, widely missing economists' expectations and tumbling to the lowest level since 2020, according to government data released Thursday.

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics — originally scheduled to be published on Tuesday but delayed by the partial government shutdown — showed there were 6.5 million jobs open at the end of December. Economists polled by Bloomberg had projected 7.25 million openings for the month.

Layoffs and discharges, at 1.8 million, increased slightly from 1.7 million a month earlier. The data was collected before recent announcements of sweeping job cuts from firms including Amazon (AMZN) and UPS (UPS).

Not only was December a significant dropoff in openings, but November’s amount of openings was revised down by 218,000 in this report. In addition, the number of openings declined by more than 1.1 million in the last 3 months of 2025.

That’s the lowest non-pandemic amount of job openings since the end of 2017, and down more than 4,300 openings since the end of 2022. Well, I guess there were some people that wanted to bring back the economy of Trump’s first term, and here we are.

And yet, what happened a day after all of this bad jobs news hit?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) led the way higher, surging by about 2.5%, or more than 1,200 points, to climb ahead of the 50,000 level for the first time.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 2% in its best session since May of last year. The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) added about 2.1%, as the indexes bounced back from Thursday's sharp closing losses and a week's worth of selling pressure.

Wall Street is ending the week with a bounce back, as Big Tech CEOs and analysts brushed aside concerns about the impact of new AI tools on legacy tech. The Dow ended the week with a gain of 2.5%, but the benchmark S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed the week in the red.

Some of tech's biggest names led the charge. Nvidia (NVDA) surged over 8%, while Broadcom (AVGO) and Tesla (TSLA) posted sizable gains. Some tech gloom persisted as Amazon's (AMZN) shares tumbled 7%. In its earnings, the major cloud provider outlined plans for a massive 2026 jump in spending to at least $200 billion, even as its forecast for operating income fell short.

Friday also had the release of the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment survey for February, which had another small increase for the month, hitting the highest levels in 6 months. But even that positive economic news comes with a major caveat.

Hmm, it's almost like the stock market and the jobs market aren't connected to each other. Or worse, the stock market is growing at the expense of the jobs market. Which might be nice for the 0.1%ers that make most of their income off of assets, but isn't so good for the bottom 80%ers who rely on actual work for 93% of their incomes.

WisGOPs decide to that they don't want to lower property taxes OR fund schools!

Legislative Republicans in Wisconsin have never forgiven Governor Evers for his maneuver to guarantee that our state's public schools would be able to use more money every year, and they are trying to find ways to stop it from happening. Let’s start by recalling how this happened.

As passed by the Legislature, 2023 Enrolled Senate Bill 70 (the 2023-25 biennial budget bill) would have set the per pupil adjustment under revenue limits at $325 in 2023-24 and 2024-25, and there would have been no per pupil adjustment in 2025-26 and each year thereafter. The Governor's partial veto modified the language of the per pupil adjustment so that the $325 adjustment would apply from 2023 through 2425. In April of 2025, the State Supreme Court opined that the Governor's 400-year partial veto was consistent with the Wisconsin Constitution.

So right now, we have $325 per student increases to the total revenue limit set to happen each year as long as any of us are around.

The first way that the WisGOPs are trying to keep this from happening is by putting a Constitutional Amendment onto this November's ballot. This measure passed the Senate on an 18-15 party-line vote, and is likely to be taken up by the GOP-controlled Assembly next week, and reads as follows.

In approving an appropriation bill in part, the governor may not create a new word by rejecting individual letters in the words of the enrolled bill, and may not create a new sentence by combining parts of 2 or more sentences of the enrolled bill, and may not create or increase or authorize the creation or increase of any tax or fee.

Seems benign on the surface, and I'd probably vote for it at face value (if you're going to raise/create a tax, a law should say so). But if the WisGOPs think this would have stopped what Evers did, they are WRONG. Because all Evers did is raise the allowable revenue that local K-12 school districts could raise. It didn't do anything to raise or create taxes or fees at the state level.

In addition to the attempted Constitutional amendment, there’s a bill going through where the WisGOP Legislature wants to use more conventional means to stop that $325-per-student increase after the next school year. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau calculated the effect that would have on resources for both public schools and payments for vouchers and charter schools.

Using the 2025-26 revenue limit enrollment of 781,400 pupils for public schools, the bill would reduce statewide revenue limit authority by approximately $254 million annually beginning in 2027-28 compared to current law. The actual effect of the bills in future biennia would depend on actual enrollments and offsets to other revenue limit adjustments related to declining enrollment. If base level funding for general school aids and the school levy tax credit were maintained, this would result in an equivalent reduction in the statewide school levy compared to current law. Changes to general school aid and school levy tax credit funding, as well as changes to other revenue limit adjustments, would also affect school levies in future years.

Providing no per pupil revenue limit adjustment under the bills would also reduce payments and appropriations for the choice and charter programs compared to current law beginning in 2027- 28. The following table shows estimated annual change to the general fund appropriations, offsetting general school aid reductions, and net general fund expenditures for each of the programs under the bills, based on estimated 2026-27 enrollments in the programs.

This feels like a more legitimate way for the Legislature to act, and it allows for the revenue limits to be re-debated with whoever our Governor will be and whoever runs the Legislature.

A $0 increase per student is not good policy, mind you, as costs keep going up in the real world and many schools are already going to referendum because an increase in resources of $325 per student did not prove to be sufficient (even for the lowest revenue limits, the increase is not even 3%). But it at least would be a way to put the solution in writing in a way that sets revenue limits through the normal lawmaking process.

As the Joint Finance Committee debated the bill this week, Dems gave a reminder as to which party decided to let property taxes go up this year.

Rep. Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha, said Republicans had a choice last summer in the budget to put additional state aid into schools to prevent the property tax hikes while ensuring public schools succeed. He accused Republicans of forcing districts to go to referendum to fund basic needs because of their refusal to fund needed costs.

“We have a way to get everyone everything they want, and you keep saying no,” McGuire said.

And the GOP response to that complaint was odd.

Sen. Romaine Quinn, R-Birchwood, said the 400-year veto is bad policy that gives every district the same increase every year, regardless of factors such as enrollment and what they spend now. With some districts spending about $11,000 per child between state aid and property taxes and others spending $18,000, Quinn said a flat increase for each child exacerbates existing inequities.

I’ve read this paragraph a few times, and I don’t know what this means (and I’m not sure Sen. Quinn does either). All districts have the same $325 per pupil increase in revenue limit, and the lower-revenue limit districts get a higher % increase than the higher-limit ones.

Sen. Quinn followed with the mystifying GOP line that having all these referenda are a good thing.

He said referendums are a compromise with education funding in allowing districts to ask taxpayers for additional funds if they believe they need more.

“What Democrats want is to never have to ask taxpayers again,” Quinn said.

That’s true, we shouldn't ask people to have to raise their property taxes to fund their schools. Because if we’d use more state tax dollars to fund K-12 education, WE WOULDN’T HAVE PROPERTY TAXES GOING UP.

Now do I think Governor Evers would actually sign this bill ending rev limit increases after next year? NO WAY. Tony’s not letting that happen while he’s in power.

But it’s good for the WisGOPs to show their hands that their “solution” to the $325 per student increases aren’t to stop property taxes from going up by increasing state aids to pay for that as well as other parts of school funding (which the “far left” portion of the Dem caucus wants to do).

Because WisGOPs really don’t care about the property tax part of K-12 public education, as much as they care about choking off community schools in general, and making them underfunded and ineffective.

I think the average Wisconsinite would prefer to have lower property taxes, fewer referendums, and adequately-funded public schools. But if GOPs want to go ahead and run on “we’re happy with how schools are funded in Wisconsin….and we want your community schools to be starved even more!”, please proceed, dipshits. It’ll likely go over as well as the Moms for Liberty candidate in Texas who just lost a Trump district in their State Senate by double digits last weekend.

ADP report shows another month with few jobs gained

With the short government shutdown of this week pushing back the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ jobs report until next Wednesday, the ADP payrolls survey got some extra attention (today). And for the first month of 2026, the ADP report served up a familiar story – anemic job growth.

US private employers added fewer positions than anticipated last month, according to the private payroll processor ADP, starting 2026 off on a downbeat note.

Private payrolls grew by just 22,000 in January, ADP said Wednesday, below economists' expectations of 45,000 positions….

"Job creation took a step back in 2025, with private employers adding 398,000 jobs, down from 771,000 in 2024," ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said in a statement. "While we've seen a continuous and dramatic slowdown in job creation for the past three years, wage growth has remained stable."

Manufacturing helped lead the slowdown with a drop of 8,000 jobs in January, according to ADP, less than one year out from President Trump's sweeping tariffs and promises to restore positions to the sector. Professional and business services also continued to decline, while construction added roles. Losses across the economy would’ve appeared even more stark if not for the healthcare and education sectors posting positive growth, with 74,000 new positions gained in January.

In addition, UW-Madison’s Menzie Chinn notes that ADP’s listing of 398,000 private sector jobs in 2025 was a significant downward revision from what had been previously reported, and those revisions say private sector jobs declined for 4 straight months between February and June before having a slight recovery in the 7 months since then.

And one sector that was a significant job-loser in 2025 was in manufacturing, which has been shedding jobs in numerous surveys since the start of 2023, and continued to slide last year.

One reason the BLS’s job report was set to get extra attention this week was that it would also include their annual benchmark revisions for jobs numbers. Based on information from the “gold standard” Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), it looks like the “official” jobs numbers are going to end up quite a bit lower than what was originally reported – and those numbers are already the worst in a non-COVID year since (2010?).

Now we have to wait until next week for that report to hit, which will seem to extend the bad jobs news beyond Friday. Everyday people already think this is a rough jobs market with wages barely keeping up with costs, which helps explain why US consumer confidence plummeted to its lowest level in 12 years last month.

But bits of data are always welcome for me to show whether this gloominess is just bad vibes about the repressive dimwits running our country, or if there’s something in the real economy that is driving those feelings. And if the strong “economic growth” numbers that may be reported end up being concentrated in a few industries with the benefits only going to a privileged few.

Wis losing a seat in Congress? That's what we're on track for as of now

Following up on the recently-released Census estimates of state and US population for 2025, that also means we are halfway between the 2020 Census and 2030’s Census. So why not project forward to what this may mean for the membership of Congress and the Electoral College after that 2030 Census, and the maps get redrawn. The American Redistricting Project went with the 2022-2025 post-COVID population trends to see what states were on track to add or lose members of the House of Representatives as well as Electoral College votes.

As you can see, Wisconsin is among the states that would lose members of the House.

Yes, I find it ironic that the GOP-led states of Florida and Texas would grab more seats in Congress in no small part because of high levels of immigration in their states, no matter how much their GOP overlords pose against it (but funny, ICE isn't overrunning their states, are they?). I also note that this projection shows that Dems can’t win the White House in 2032 merely by getting back the Blue Wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and having everything else be the same.

I want to center on the Wisconsin situation in particular, as we are pretty close to the threshold where we could hold onto our 8th seat in the House.

So if we gain people at a faster rate than Michigan or don’t lose as much ground to Texas or Georgia in the next 2 years, maybe we stay at 8 seats. But if we don’t, then it would add even more importance to redistricting here for 2031, because some member of Congress is losing his/her seat regardless of the result of elections.

I took a crack at what that might look like, if we were trying to make a relatively even 7-member map in Wisconsin. Here’s what it looks like.

And I’m going to use two races to see what the partisanship of these districts might be. I’ll use the 2022 Governor’s race (Dems win by 3.5%) and 2024 Presidential race (GOP wins by 0.9%) as baselines to see who would be favored in these districts, and by how much.

2022 Governor race

2024 Presidential race

I can probably do some more manipulations to make it even closer to level (either moving District 1 more into Milwaukee or moving District 3 into Dane County), but this is a good start. 2 Dem districts, 2 GOP districts, and 3 districts that lean GOP in various amounts, but are definitely flippable for Dems.

January's release from the Census Bureau only had state population. We will find out later this year how population has changed inside of Wisconsin, and which counties and communities of our state are growing faster than others, along with the ones that are losing people. That's also a key factor in what happens for districts at both the Congressional and statehouse level, and we can see if the COVID-era trends that encouraged more people to move up North in this state are still happening, or if people are heading back to metro areas, and where in metro areas are they going to.

Also remember that Wisconsin Republicans have 6 seats in the House today as a result of their 2012 and 2022 gerrymanders. So in any 7-district scenario, they are likely to have 1 fewer GOP seat than today, and possibly 2 or 3. So maybe our GOP members of Congress should be going out of their way to encourage more migration to our state (both from inside and outside the country), and making sure that every Wisconsin resident gets counted in 2030. Because the job they save could well be their own.

Wis population grows again in 2025, but both state and US growth is slowing down

After some delay due to this Fall's government shutdown, we finally got new Census estimates for 2025 in this week, both for the nation and for individual states.

Overall, US population growth was nearly cut in half last year, largely due to the Trump/Stephen Miller Administration’s racism action against immigrants and immigration.

· Between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025, the U.S. population grew by 1.8 million (or 0.5%) to reach 341.8 million.

· The U.S. population grew at a much slower rate between July 2024 and July 2025 than from 2023 to 2024 (when it increased by 1.0%, or 3.2 million people). The slowdown is largely due to lower levels of net international migration.

· Between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, net international migration was 1.3 million, a notable drop from 2.7 million the year before (a decline of 53.8%). If current trends continue, net international migration is projected to be approximately 321,000 by July 2026, representing another decline of nearly 1 million since July 1, 2025.

Fun fact - you know which states had the highest growth from international migration in late ‘24-early ‘25? Florida (+178,674) and Texas (+167,475)! And immigrants accounted for over 90% of Florida’s population growth in the last year! So why isn’t TrumpWorld sending ICE all over those places…..?

While a lot of the trends of more Americans moving south continued in late 2024 and early 2025, I’ll note that our part of the country is also growing and attracting people from other parts of America. And we didn’t have our population growth drop off as much as other regions last year.

The Midwest was the only region where all states gained population from July 2024 to July 2025. In addition, after experiencing population decline in 2021 and small growth in 2022, the Midwest’s population grew solidly in 2023 (259,938), 2024 (386,231), and 2025 (244,385). Slight gains in natural change (births minus deaths) for some of the states in the Midwest contributed to their population growth.

“From July 2024 through June 2025, the Midwest also saw positive net domestic migration for the first time this decade,” said Marc Perry, senior demographer at the Census Bureau. “And while the net domestic migration was a relatively modest 16,000, this is still a notable turnaround from the substantial domestic migration losses in 2021 and 2022 of -175,000 or greater.”

Wisconsin was a part of this trend of positive domestic migration for 2025 (+6,984), and continued with to have its population go up overall (+15,619). However, we also had a slowdown in population growth, as that's lower than the 27,000+ we added in 2023 and 2024.

It places us in the bottom half of our Midwestern neighbors for growth, although we were not a huge laggard for the region as a whole. (I define the “Midwest” as the 7 states of the pre-1993 Big Ten. The Census Bureau may define it a bit differently and widely).

Since the last Census in 2020, Wisconsin has added 78,464 to our population (+1.33%), a number that places us smack dab in the middle for the Midwest, both in terms of amount and rate.

Change in population 2020-2025
Ind. +186,728
Minn +123,742
Ohio +101,065
Wis. +78,464
Mich +48,522
Iowa +47,805
Ill. -102,600

% Change in population 2020-2025
Ind. +2.75%
Minn +2.17%
Iowa +1.50%
Wis. +1.33%
Ohio +0.86%
Mich +0.48%
Ill. -0.80%

I'll take the positive net migration and overall population growth as good signs for this state, especially as we go through a week where the temperature has been below zero every night and the high temps haven't gotten above 15. And if we keep on adding 15,000-27,000 people a year, as we have in the last 4 years, we will break 6 million for total population by 2027.

Nationally, we can see where the Trumpian limitations on immigration was already having an effect on the country's population growth by mid-2025, and that's going to limit the amount of job and consumer spending growth that we can get (conversely, it also explains why our tiny job growth might not spike unemployment as much as it would have before 2025). So one of the big engines of our surprisingly large post-COVID job and GDP growth is going away, and once the Bubbles pop, it doesn't seem like there will be much on the demographic side to make up for it.

Ignore that rising property tax bill, because Wisconsin's tax burden is the lowest in decades!

Here's a recent report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum with a conclusion that may be surprising to you. Wisconsinites are currently enjoying their lowest tax burden on record.

Wisconsin residents in fiscal year 2025 paid 9.60% of what they receive from all income sources in state and local taxes, matching 2024’s record low to remain at the lowest total burden in our data going back to the 1970’s. Figure 1 shows the long-term decline, which began the mid-1980s and became notably more consistent since 2010, as state leaders took more aggressive efforts to reduce the tax burden, and incomes grew after the painful years of the Great Recession.

While the tax burden fell, overall state and local taxes grew by 5.0% in fiscal 2025 to $38.8 billion, among the largest single-year jumps in the last 20 years. However, statewide personal income growth matched that rate, also rising by 5.0% in 2025.

Remember that "tax burden" isn't the amount of taxes you pay, but how that compares to your income. It's also worth noting that the state tax burden went down, but the rise in property taxes and new sales taxes in the state's largest city made the local tax burden go up.

State tax revenue, including income and sales taxes, climbed 4.2%, above the annual average growth of 3.1% for the past 20 years. However, because the income of state residents and businesses grew more rapidly, state taxes hit another record low in 2025, dropping from 6.41% to 6.36%.

Local tax revenue grew by 6.4%, the most since 2005, and nearly triple the 2.4% average annual rate of increase during that same time period. Net property taxes helped drive that increase, growing by 4.6%, or $518.1 million. Big bumps in local sales tax collections, which grew by 12.2% or $76.5 million, plus the addition of $169.3 million from the new city of Milwaukee sales tax, were also major contributors. Overall, the local tax burden climbed just slightly, from 3.19% to 3.24%.

The local tax change is quite variable for 2025, depending on whether your school district had a referendum (raises hand in Madison), or in how much money you spent in Milwaukee (and yes, your Brewer tickets are part of that extra sales tax), or if your community added or increased their wheel taxes.

But the Wisconsin Department of Transportation didn't see revenue increases to the level of income, sales, or local taxes, as 2025 was another year where WisDOT revenues didn't keep up with inflation.

Gas tax collections grew by 1.5% in 2025 to $1.12 billion after falling slightly the two previous years, while fees collected for registering vehicles grew by 0.6% to $937.8 million. Driver license fees saw the fastest rise, up 5.8% to $42.1 million, matching their all-time high in 2009. Increased demand for new licenses may be due to federal requirements for REAL ID compliant documents when boarding airplanes. The state’s limo rental fee, the smallest transportation revenue we track, grew by 7.1%, to $13.8 million.

Put it together, and overall transportation revenues only rose by 1.2% last year, well below the increase in costs. Which helps to explain why the current state budget is sending neatly $748 million into the Transportation Fund to help pay for WisDOT's projects and services, as gas taxes and registration fees are not able to get the jobs done. And that's a hole in the budget that the next Governor is going to have to deal with sooner than later.

I would expect this tax burden stat to be even lower next year, as income tax cuts signed in the budget start to show up in higher tax refunds over the next few months, and there won't be the one-time increase in local sales taxes, since last year was the first year Milwaukee had its new sales tax. But the question is whether this is leaving us in a better situation, either through the lower investments in community schools or through the pass-down of taxes from the state to the local level, like when the WisGOP Legislature refused to add General Aids to K-12 schools and we ended up with the largest K-12 property tax increase in decades.

Which is a big reason why we should consider using our $2.5 billion surplus to use some state tax dollars to lower those property taxes, and start rebalancing a Wisconsin tax burden that's in need of adjustment.

Wisconsin Medicaid could go $1 billion in the hole, as Trump Admin double-crosses Van Orden and state

I know the events of this screwy country make a week seem like a month, but do you remember this thing from last Summer?

You have got to be kidding me. Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin wrote a letter urging his state’s Democratic governor to take steps to protect rural hospitals from the fallout of Republicans’ widely reviled budget bill — which Van Orden voted for. www.msnbc.com/top-stories/...

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— Dizzygirl (@dizzygirl.bsky.social) July 4, 2025 at 11:59 AM

This led the Wisconsin Legislature and Governor Evers to play "beat the clock" with the state budget, with Evers signing it in the early morning hours of July 3, barely beating Trump/GOP's Big Bill of Bollocks into becoming law, as the Big Bill of Bollocks cut off any of these sort of enhanced Federal match rates for hospitals to limit the cost of the bill (while adding tens of billions a year to ICE at the same time).

Well, it turns out that the presidential Administration that Small-D VO stands with may screw over the state in the strategy that Van Orden told the state to take. And Western Wisconsin Democrats recently sent a letter to Van Orden asking him to try to get the Trump Administration from taking away hundreds of millions of dollars from the state.

On July 2nd, 2025 you sent a letter to Governor Evers regarding the state’s biennial budget stating: “As you are aware, timely enactment is especially critical this year due to the proposed increase in the state provider tax, which must be effectuated before the anticipated signing of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill on or around July 4, 2025.” You further stated “Wisconsin will immediately receive a $500,000,000 plus up for rural healthcare infrastructure, and an additional billion dollars annually for healthcare in our great state.”

As you know, the Wisconsin state budget was passed by the State Senate and State Assembly on July 2nd, 2025, and was signed into law on July 3rd, 2025, before the signing of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill which was signed on July 4th, 2025. Unfortunately, the Trump administration is currently moving forward with an unprecedented action to deny Wisconsin’s ability to draw down the additional promised hospital assessment dollars, which will cost our state nearly $800 million every biennium.

Our hospitals, and especially our rural hospitals were counting on that funding to keep their doors open. This increased funding is needed to help hospitals sustain and expand access to care for patients across Wisconsin when one-third of the state’s hospitals are operating at a deficit, driven by $1.6 billion in losses from Medicaid reimbursement.

At a time when our medical institutions are facing unprecedented financial challenges, we must do everything we can to ensure their ability to continue to operate. Our state budget was counting on it, and our constituents’ lives literally depend on it. We implore you to do everything in your power to reverse these catastrophic decisions.

If the Trump Administration were to reverse themselves and disallow the added hospital assessment, it would not only likely lead to more hospitals in the state to close, but it would add expenses to a Wisconsin Medicaid budget that was already running at a deficit. Because at the start of this month, the state's Department of Health Services said that state tax dollars going into these medical care programs was on track to go over what was budgeted.

Since our previous quarterly report, the Department has another quarter of enrollment and cost experience data and has completed Calendar Year 2026 capitation rate setting for Medicaid acute and long-term managed care programs. Based on this additional information, the Department projects expenditures will exceed available budget by $213.2 million GPR by the end of the biennium, which is 2.2% above budgeted levels under 2025 Act 15, the 2025-27 biennial budget.

Several factors are contributing to the projected deficit. The Act 15 Medicaid budget adopted lower Family Care and Family Care Partnership enrollment growth trends than the Department recommended during budget development. The actual enrollment trend so far this biennium suggests program enrollment will be even higher than the Department anticipated prior to passage of Act 15. This quarterly projection assumes that by FY 27, MCO enrollment will be 3.4% higher than Act 15 provided. At the same time, the Department has now finalized Family Care managed care organization (MCO) capitation rates for CY 26, which overall are more favorable than budget, and which partially offset the higher enrollment costs. The net biennial impact is an expected $45 million GPR deficit for these services.

In addition, fee for service nursing home expenditures and Children’s Long Term Supports (CLTS) program costs are significantly higher than budget due to higher-than-projected utilization, adding $59 million GPR and $38 million GPR to the deficit, respectively.

The report goes on to note that despite lower-than-expected enrollment in BadgerCare Plus and SSI managed care services in Wisconsin, costs for items like prescription drugs and substance abuse/mental health services are also running higher, so the state will likely have to tap into its $2.5 billion surplus to take care of the Medicaid deficit before the budget cycle ends on June 30, 2027.

So if the Trump Administration decides to divert more money for ICE thugs disallow this extra Federal funding from Wisconsin's hosptial assessment, and combine it with the $213 million projected deficit in Medicaid, and that's over $1 billion that goes away from the state's $2.5 billion surplus. And that could sink the chances of using that surplus for property tax relief (or a one-time property tax rebate, as I'd argue for).

But don't worry, those tax cuts for the rich will trickle down any day now to everyday people instead of going to stock buybacks and other paper-trading, so why would you care if the Trump Admin screws over people in their medical care and helps to keep your property taxes high?

Income and spending was same-old, same-old last Fall. But savings kept falling

Even with the job losses and other disruptions from the Fall’s government shutdown, apparently there wasn’t much change for the consumer spending side of the economy vs what we had in the Summer.

Consumers continued to ramp up their spending as the holiday shopping season revved up in November, but high prices continued to bite, new data showed Thursday.

A shutdown-delayed report from the Commerce Department showed that spending rose 0.5% from October, an increase that was above economists’ expectations for a 0.4% gain.

When adjusted for inflation, consumer spending rose 0.3%.

The report also showed that inflation remained stubbornly higher than normal, according to the shutdown-delayed report that also included previously unreleased data for October.

But that consumer spending number isn’t adjusted for inflation, so real spending went up by 0.3% in each of those months – still solid, but not booming either.

But inflation is still running at a 12-month increase of 2.8% in this report (if you buy that food prices slightly declined in October and November. Why are you laughing?). That’s not really any different than the PCE index was rising during the election in November 2024, when we were told prices were rising at an unacceptable rate.

Another trend that continued with this report was income growth staying soft, only up by 0.1% in October and 0.3% in November. And for much of 2025, work income has grown at lower amounts than we saw in 2024.

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Which means that personal savings continued to fall through November of last year, down by nearly $479 billion on an annual basis compared to where we were in April, and dropping the savings rate to 3.5% - the lowest in more than 3 years.

And this is before the jump in health insurance premiums hit in January, along with other year-start gouging re-setting of prices by businesses. Doesn’t seem that great.

But I guess as long as people keep the money moving and mass layoffs keep getting avoided, the economy will keep growing. No matter how weak the fundamentals are or how much closer to the edge normal working people keep getting.

In most areas, construction and housing were struggling in late 2025

We continue to get economic reports that were backlogged from the government shutdown that ended more than 2 months ago. This one shows what seems to be a strong report for new construction in America for October, until you look closer at the details.

U.S. construction spending increased more than expected in October, likely reflecting home renovations, with activity elsewhere weak.

The Commerce Department's Census Bureau ​said on Wednesday that construction spending rose 0.5% after falling 0.6% in ‌September. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast construction spending gaining 0.1% in October. Spending dropped 1.0% year-on-year in ‌October….

Investment in residential construction shot up 1.3% after slumping 1.4% in September. That was despite a 1.3% drop in spending on new single-family housing ⁠projects. Spending on multi-family housing ‌units, which account for a small share of the housing market, slipped 0.2%.

With both single- and multi-family housing projects falling, the increase in ‍residential outlays was likely because of renovations. Homebuilding has been hamstrung by higher mortgage rates, more expensive building materials because of tariffs on imports as well as labor shortages.

In fact, improvements and other residential construction nearly outpaced the amount of new construction of single-family homes in October. Single-family home construction is down nearly 8% since Feburary, and the value of multi-family homes was lower than it was at the start of this year.

Non-residential construction has also been skidding, with private non-residential construction seeing declines for 4 straight months, and down 6.8% since the end of 2023.

But yet the overall amount of new construction allegedly grew in October because of improvements and add-ons to current homes. Still doesn't seem like the sector was in good health at that time. The mortgage market has picked up recently, after the Trump Administration’s move from 2 weeks ago where they decided to buy $200 billion in mortgage debt. However, it’s not because more homes are being sold.

Last week, applications to refinance a home loan rose 20% compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index. Applications were 183% higher than the same week one year ago.

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances, $832,750 or less, decreased to 6.16% from 6.18%, with points falling to 0.54 from 0.56, including the origination fee, for loans with a 20% down payment. That is the lowest rate since September 2024.

Good news if you bought a house in the last 3 years, but still not a level that many of us would refinance at. And the recent boost in that refi activity seems likely to end soon.

Interest rates moved much higher to start this week, as bond markets sold off following the Trump’s threats of new tariffs and escalating tensions over Greenland. The average rate on the 30-year fixed jumped 14 basis points higher, according to a separate survey from Mortgage News Daily.

“This matches the level seen the day before the announcement of the administration’s $200 billion mortgage bond buying plans. The last time rates were higher was December 23rd,” wrote Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily. “In light of that announcement, why aren’t mortgage rates doing better? Simply put, the market has already reacted to that news to the extent allowed by its transparency.”

So the Trump Admin has pumped in more money to the economy (an inflationary move), and caused some capital flight due to his demented ramblings on Greenland and other foreign countries, which raises interest rates and counteracts the goals of buying up the $200 billion in mortgage bonds. That’s the type of “businessman brilliance” those low-infos voted for in November 2024, isn’t it?

We got some data today that may show why the Trump Admin felt a need to pump up the housing market. Because 2024 ended with a significant drop of Americans signing contracts to buy houses.

Stagnant mortgage rates, falling housing supply and ongoing economic uncertainty weighed heavily on homebuyers in December.

Pending home sales, a measure of signed contracts on existing homes, dropped 9.3% last month from November, according to the National Association of Realtors. Analysts were expecting a slight gain.

Sales were 3% lower than December 2024….

Sales fell month to month in all regions of U.S. and were higher annually only in the South.

Homes also stayed on the market longer in December, at an average of 39 days compared with 35 days in December 2024.

So it appears the construction sector and the housing market were two more major parts of our economy that were being held up by odd, temporary moves at the end of 2024.

I don’t see how those bumps show an improving overall trajectory, and it may well make things worse as the blips of remodelings and Treasury injections to lower interests rates unwind in the coming months. And all of this happy talk that I see people trying to pull on the economy isn’t something that seems to be connected to the reality and the data that we see in the everyday economy that people with actual jobs and lives have to deal with.

Big revenue boost allows for property tax relief in Wis. Now how do you do it?

Governor Evers recently had interviews with state media to mark the start of his last year in office. And those discussions included some surprising budget news, and a plan to deal with it.

Gov. Tony Evers said state revenues for 2025-27 are on track to come in as much as $1 billion higher than previously projected — and he wants lawmakers to use the additional funds to drive down property taxes.

The Dem governor, in his last year of office, called on lawmakers to approve the $1.3 billion in property tax relief he included in the 2025-27 budget that Republicans rejected. Still, he told reporters he was open to any approach that would help homeowners…..

Evers’ budget called for a series of steps to lower property taxes, from putting more state money into public education to supplemental aid for local governments.

The new call, which wouldn’t impact homeowners until they receive their bills in December, was one of several pushes Evers made for lawmakers to spend money the state either has in reserves or is expected to take in. The 2025-27 budget he signed was projected to have a gross balance of $770 million at the end of the biennium.

His ideas range from putting more money into special education reimbursement to approving various sales tax breaks Evers proposed in the budget, such as exempting adult diapers and breast pumps.

Turns out that Evers' prediction was selling things short, as on Thursday the Legislative Fiscal Bureau released their updated revenue estimates for the rest of the 2025-27 biennium.

Based upon our analysis, we project the closing, net general fund balance at the end of this biennium (June 30, 2027) to be $2,373.5 million. This is $1,529.0 million above the net balance that was projected at the time of enactment of the 2025-27 biennial budget, as modified to: (1) incorporate the 2024-25 ending balance (2025-26 opening balance) as shown in the Annual Fiscal Report; (2) include the fiscal effect of all legislation enacted to date in the current legislative session (2025 Acts 1 to 82); and (3) include the estimated fiscal effects of the following general fund tax law changes that were automatically adopted by, or altered estimated tax collections for, the state after enactment of the federal P.L. 119-21, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA): (a) the credit percentage for the child and dependent care expense credit; (b) Section 179 expensing provisions; (c) the federal limit for itemized deductions of state and local taxes; (d) reporting requirements for de minimus payments by third-party settlement organizations; (e) health savings accounts; (f) the qualified small business stock exclusion; (g) eligible expenses made from college savings accounts; (h) eligible rollovers to ABLE accounts from college savings accounts; and (i) the repeal of the deduction for energy efficient buildings.

The $1,529.0 million is the net result of: (1) an increase of $1,367.1 million in estimated tax collections; (2) an increase of $104.0 million in departmental revenues (non-tax receipts deposited in the general fund); (3) an increase of $49.9 million in sum sufficient appropriations; and (4) an increase of $107.8 million in the amounts that are estimated to lapse (revert) to the general fund.

And that's with the LFB adding in the $115 million that by law has to be set aside. Add that in, and it's nearly $2.5 billion that's projected in the bank, which is more than 3 times vs what was a relatively small cushion that was built into the budget when it became law back in July.

So why did LFB say things were looking so good? Income taxes are one major reason.

Total collections for 2025-26 are estimated at $10,330 million, which is $455.7 million (4.6%) higher than the previous estimates. One factor that is expected to help revenues over the rest of 2025- 26 is the projected high level of capital gains realizations for tax year 2025. [Realizations for tax year 2026 are also expected to be significant, though not as high as tax years 2024 or 2025]. Additionally, the year-to-date withholding growth for 2025-26 (5.7%) is higher than had been anticipated.

Total individual income tax revenues for 2026-27 are projected to increase by 3.2% year-over- year, to a total of $10,665 million. Relative to the previous estimates, these figures are higher by $311.9 million (3.0%). Major contributing factors to this increase include an improved forecast for wages and salaries, which impacts withholding collections, and a higher forecast for capital gains.

In addition, the LFB says that corporate taxes are projected to be $583 million above what was budgeted, as corporate profits continue to hit new records and are projected to keep growing over the next 18 months.But one warning I'd give is that the $700 million in income tax cuts that were part of the budget are going to show us as larger state tax refunds in the next 3 months. That's a significant unknown which could change those total revenues when Fiscal Year 2026 closes on June 30, for better or worse.

But part of the reason Evers isn't willing to wait for tax season to verify the larger revenues before he asks the Legislature to use that money for property tax relief is that the GOP-led State Legislature will go on their 10 month paid vacation in the next 6-8 weeks or so, before tax season ends. Not surprisingly, the GOP-led State Legislature has different ideas on how to limit or cut property taxes, starting with Assembly Speaker Robbin’ Vos.

Republicans are pushing SB 389/AB 391, which would end that per pupil increase after the 2026-27 school year, and it cleared an Assembly committee last week. “So hopefully he would work with us to say, assuming we do property tax relief, we can’t just keep putting more water into a bucket full of holes. We need to fill the holes and then make sure that the bucket has the ability to deliver the relief,” Vos said.

What “bucket” is Robbin’ talking about? Is he saying he wants to leak out funding to schools by cutting property taxes? If so, I guess that hacky metaphor makes sense, but I’m not thinking the average Wisconsin voter is down with cutting even more resources to public schools in their community.

The Senate has already passed this bill during the current session, and the GOP Leader in that house threw in his own talking points on the situation.

“Now that everyday people are feeling the impact of his 400-year mistake, Governor Evers is desperately trying to pass the buck,” said Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg. “If the governor really cared about lowering property taxes, he would sign our proposal to eliminate the automatic 400-year property tax increase he unilaterally created.”

Congrats, Devin LeMahieu! You are the new contestant on the game show “GOP, LYING or STUPID??”

For the God-knows-how-many-ith time, the only reason we have a property tax increase for schools is because the GOP refused to put state aid into the schools. The $325-per-student increase in revenue limit is for a combined total of state general aids and property taxes. And the GOP chose to pass a budget that ended up cutting state general aids for nearly 3/4 of the state’s districts for this school year. Hence…higher property taxes.

Not surprisingly, the failure of the WisGOP Legislature to have the state pay its share resulted in the largest increase in K-12 property taxes in Wisconsin in decades, as the Wisconsin Policy Forum reminded us in December.

The easiest solution to all of this isn’t something either Evers or Vos/LeMahieu have brought up. Why not just back $400 to each tax filer in Wisconsin as a property tax/rent rebate, which they will get by June of this year. Last month, I estimated a doubling of the Property Tax and Renter's Credit from $300 to $600 would cost around $255 million, so a $400 rebate would be maybe $340 million? That seems to play it cautiously enough so that if the $1.4 billion in extra revenue becomes more like $700 million, we wouldn't risk a situation where the new Governor would have to fix a potential deficit as he/she comes into office.

The Wisconsin DOR should have the names of all of those who filed state taxes and took the Property Tax/Renter’s Credit, so the check would go out to everyone who claims it for this year. And it would be something that can be felt by Wisconsinites long before property tax bills come out in December (and before the 2026 elections, if that matters….and it sure should if you’re a WisGOP that’s already in big danger of losing your ill-gotten majorities).

No matter how you do it, there is NO excuse for there not to be some kind of way to use the higher projections of revenues to give property tax relief in Wisconsin. And Evers and the Legislature are not able to get to a deal, then I'd sure encourage Dems running in all state-level elections to run on using a sizable surplus as a reason to cut property taxes AND adequately fund our community schools. Because today's strong revenue numbers show that it can and should be done.