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/...

[image or embed]

— 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?