Rodriguez wants to work out budget with Legis Dems before taking office? Yeah, why wouldn't she?

With the Democratic primary for Governor in Wisconsin coming up in 3 ½ months, we’re finally starting to see some conflict and differentiations coming in. And there’s also a discussion about how to do a budget? Ooh, let me check this out!

During an April 16 event with the Rock County Democrats, [Lieutenant Governor Sara] Rodriguez said she committed to Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein and Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer "that we are going to work together to get this budget across the finish line," in part, by negotiating before Rodriguez takes office.

"I have committed to having a budget done before I swear in, and we are going to do this − we are going to do our negotiations behind a curtain so that we are not doing a circular firing squad within the Democratic Party because we have got to make a difference in people's lives. We have got to be on the same page," Rodriguez said, according to audio of the event obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

"So those negotiations need to happen early and they need to happen quickly, and we need to put as much as we can into the budget because we are going to have purple district Democrats that are going to struggle a bit with some of the legislation that we want to get across.

The “negotiations behind a curtain” comment by Lt. Gov Rodriguez got jumped on by a couple of other Dems in the Guv primary.

"Latest reminder to everyone that sunshine is the best disinfectant," state Sen. Kelda Roys, who sits on the budget-writing committee, said in a post on X. "Backroom deals are NOT the way to deliver progress for Wisconsinites. Democracy delivers best when it’s transparent and inclusive of everyone in the state."…

Interesting comment, given that Sen. Roys just got endorsed by the statewide teacher’s union, and I didn’t recall WEAC going around the state having meetings with each candidate that were open to the public. Nor did they have an open vote by all its members, and instead had their board of directors make the call. But hey, sunshine.

Another Dem candidate put out his own “transparency in budgeting” response out today in response to the Lieutenant Governor’s comments.

[Democratic Guv candidate Joel] Brennan, who served as Department of Administration secretary under Gov. Tony Evers, said [April] 24 he would create a budget drafting process that begins with surveying every household in the state and public listening sessions, which already take place under Evers and the Legislature's finance committee.

"I helped build two budgets with Governor Evers. It's one of the hardest things a governor does. You're balancing the needs of every state agency and every community, all at once, with the clock ticking. I saw what works. I also saw what could be done better," Brennan said in a statement about Evers' budget process.

"Too many Wisconsin families feel like the budget happens to them, not for them. Deals get cut in back rooms, last-minute items get crammed in at midnight, and by the time anyone finds out what's in the budget, it's already law."….

The timing of Brennan's plan indirectly takes a shot at Rodriguez. In it, he says, "You don't get a good budget by hiding it from the people it's supposed to serve."

While I agree with Brennan’s sentiments about not doing shenanigans at night without discussion, he’s pulling an “apples and oranges” here. I’m enough of a dork/bureaucrat to know how the budget process goes, and those “last-minute items…crammed in at midnight” is something that happens after the budget is submitted by the Governor and is being debated in the Legislature. Also, it seems pretty ridiculous to survey 5.9 million Wisconsinites after you’ve run a long campaign where you are supposed to be telling voters what will happen should you end up being elected Governor.

What Rodriguez was describing when it comes to constructing a budget is generally more inclusive than what we’ve seen in recent years. And it would be a result of Dems running everything vs what we’ve had in the last 8 years, when it’s been Dem Gov Evers and a GOP Legislature. Let’s remind you of how things have gone since 2019, including the time that Joel Brennan was DOA Secretary.

Evers has generally worked within the Governor’s Office and the Department of Administration’s budget shop, and may have some conversations with WisGOPs on some topics along the way. But most of the budget gets worked on and written up internally by Evers and other officials, with a budget address in February where Evers would say “here’s the budget and here’s what I want out of it.”

And then the GOP Legislature would generally ignore what Evers and DOA had submitted and tear up most of it before any kind of debate could even begin. For example, here’s what the GOP-run Joint Finance Committee did around this time last year.

Republicans who run the Legislature are scheduled to remove hundreds of provisions from the governor’s budget with a single committee vote Thursday, covering everything from a state-funded child care subsidy to a new tax bracket for the wealthiest Wisconsinites.

It’s the same process Republicans have used every two years since Evers became governor, although the number of items removed from the budget this time is dramatic in scope. In all, more than 600 provisions would be deleted, leaving a shell of the budget Evers introduced to the public in February.

Many of the proposals Republicans plan to reject have been through the same process before. For example, Evers is again calling for an expansion of Medicaid in Wisconsin, which Republicans are poised to reject for the fourth budget in a row.

Two years ago, Evers made the creation of a new paid family leave program a centerpiece of his budget. GOP lawmakers voted it down on the first day of budget deliberations and are slated to do the same thing this year.

Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, who co-chair the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee, issued a written statement saying the Thursday vote would remove “hundreds of reckless spending and policy items” from Evers’ budget.

That’s the way things go sometimes. Evers rightfully doesn’t back away from letting the public know what he wants to get done, and hopes to move public opinion toward his view and that of the Democrats (why give up on your priorities before you have to?). But the WisGOPs don’t want certain things, and because they have had the majority (legitimate or not), they have had the votes and the right to shoot things down.

But what if these guys aren't in charge next year?

What Rodriguez is talking about is a situation where Dems take control of the Legislature, and she wants the Dem leaders of the Legislature to be in agreement with the main ideas and changes of the budget as it is being worked out. This move would add input from the Assembly and Senate as the budget bill is being crafted, unlike what has been the case under Evers (which you should blame Robbin’ Vos and company for, not Evers).

When you run the show, the intent should be to put together something that can be passed into law, and include stuff that all Dems in the group find acceptable and important. Hopefully, that bill has real changes that get the state back on track and corrects the awfulness that has been part of the 16 year Age of Fitzwalkerstan.

Those changes have to be noticeable, and come fast. So I take Rodriguez’s statement as saying she doesn’t want to waste time between the November election and when she would take office in January. That’s what the “Behind the Curtain” meetings would be about – to handle concerns that may exist and improve the chances of success of what ultimately becomes the final product that gets back to her desk to be signed into law. Having the budget set up as she would take office also allows a better chance to get things into law sooner than later.

We know what Scott Walker and the WisGOPs did when they took power in 2011. They blasted through a bunch of new tax credits and giveaways in a special session in January, including the setup of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) to replace the Wisconsin Department of Commerce.

And then the bomb of the bill that became Act 10 was dropped in early February, with plans to jam the whole package through within a week of being released to the public! This was why Dems left the state and protestors occupied the Capitol, to slow the bill down and allow people to know what was in it, especially since Walker and WisGOP never ran on busting public sector unions, so the public hadn’t voted on the question.

If the Dems take power for 2027, while they may move fast, I doubt they’re going to try to sneak anything through like pre-written ALEC bills Walker and WisGOP tried to with Act 10. When the budget bill gets introduced by the next Governor, I’m sure there will be statewide hearings as well as hearings inside the Capitol in Madison no matter who is in charge, with plenty of opportunities to get improvements and changes put in.

And once she would give a budget address, why wouldn’t a Governor Rodriguez go out to all corners of the state to sell what’s in the budget she sends down, like any other Governor has done? If there’s some new concern that crops up, it’s not like there’s no way to fix it. It would likely be discussed and potentially modified in public by the Joint Finance Committee and the State Legislature like any other budget bill would be.

I will say that I’d be voting for Rodriguez in the primary if the election was today, so I may be showing some of that bias in this post (obviously, my support can change based on events in the next few months, as well as the likelihood of candidates to have a chance to win as August hits). But I think this is a non-troversy, and I’d much rather have a gubernatorial candidate that has a plan in place and bills ready to go when he/she takes the oath of office in January 2027 than I would someone who shrugs and says “I’m not sure about what I’d do or how I can get it done.”

In case you’re reading this and somehow connected with a Dem candidate for Governor (yes, I’m joking), let me tell you that not having a clue on how to get things done isn’t going to get you elected. Especially in a time when there are a lot of things to fix in this state, and Dem voters being fired up by the opportunity to do so. Just sayin’.

Higher gas prices didn't slow down consumers, drivers in March

We are starting to see the economic data from the first month after the bombs started falling in the Middle East. And it looks like American consumers haven’t really changed anything about their spending habits beyond having to spend more for gasoline, as Tuesday’s retail sales numbers didn’t show any consumer slowdown.

A spike in gas prices due to the Iran war, now in its eighth week, resulted in a hefty 1.7% gain in retail sales in March after a revised 0.7% increase in February, according to the Commerce Department’s report on Tuesday. The figure marked the fastest one-month increase in retail sales in more than three years.

The report marks the first read on spending to capture the effects of the Iran war.

Excluding gas prices, retail sales were up 0.6%, helped in part by government tax refunds and warm weather.

Business at gas stations rose 15.5% percent.

The 0.6% increase ex-gas sales is the key stat there, as non-energy inflation was at 0.2% for April, so that indicates real growth that was as good as we had in the first two months of 2026, and possibly better.

We also don’t see any changes in driving habits of Americans so far, as gas usage is not really any different than what we have seen in the last 3 years (I am leaving out April 2020's figures, since that was the peak of COVID shutdowns).

We also have yet to see gas availability be any different than it’s been in recent years. If anything, gas is more available in America now than it was 3 years ago.

But even though we have yet to see shortages of oil or gasoline in either the US or the rest of the world, those are likely to come soon if the blockades in the Strait of Hormuz continue past this month.

The vital energy channel has been largely closed to non-Iranian shipping since war began at the end of February, choking off hundreds of millions of barrels of supply. Consumer nations have been using up buffer inventories that they hold for emergencies to cope with the shortfall.

While international forecasters already acknowledge that conflict is sapping economic growth and oil demand, merchants including Vitol Group, Gunvor Group and Trafigura Group warned on Tuesday that the situation will get even worse if Hormuz doesn’t open up soon.

“We’ve borrowed supply,” Vitol Group Chief Executive Officer Russell Hardy said at the FT Commodities Global Summit in Lausanne, pointing to drawdowns of inventories from a variety of sources. “But you can’t do that forever. There are recessionary consequences from having to ration that demand.”

Benchmark oil futures rallied about 30% since the war began. They spiked to almost $120 a barrel in early March but have since subsided, trading near $95 on Tuesday amid tentative hopes the US and Iran can reach some kind of peace deal.

I wanted to look at what we’d expect at $90 oil. The last time we hit that mark was in September 2023, and gas prices in September and October 2023 were between $3.50 and $4 a gallon.

One difference is that September and October are the off-season for gasoline usage, as Summer ends and school years begin. In April 2026, we are still a month away from the Summer driving season and the typical increase in gas prices that goes along with that. And just because oil is back toward $90 a barrel instead of triple digits, don't expect gas prices will be falling back under $3 any time soon.

Energy observers are increasingly acknowledging a bottom line for motorists that prices at the pump are likely to be elevated for the foreseeable future — no matter what happens in the short term in the Strait of Hormuz and with another round of peace talks on tap this week.

“We will probably see those high prices sticky for longer,” CIBC Private Wealth senior energy trader Rebecca Babin told Yahoo Finance on Monday.....

Any easing of gas price pressures is likely to be slow and unsatisfying for drivers — as well as for Republicans facing midterm voters — in part because of a historical phenomenon that economists have taken to calling “rockets and feathers.”

As the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis explained in 2022, crude oil and refined gas prices don’t always move in tandem. They often shoot upward together (like a rocket), but when crude oil prices later ease, refined gasoline prices sometimes drift down at a much slower rate (like a falling feather).

The formal economic term for the phenomenon is “asymmetric pass-through,” and it stems from a variety of causes, including the lag between refiners buying crude oil and then selling their refined product and the need to preemptively protect bottom lines in moments of uncertainty.

Let's also account for good old fashioned profit-hoarding, as why wouldn't oil companies and gasoline refiners take advantage of a good thing for as long as possible (there are stockholders to satisfy, you know!). And I bet Trump/GOP aren't going to be looking too closely at any possible price-gouging, given that environmental group Climate Power estimates that fossil fuel interests spent $445 million in the 2024 election cycle in donations and lobbying, overwhelmingly in support of Trump and other Republicans.

It didn't cut into other areas of consumer spending for March, but let's see what happens now that we've been dealing with these higher gas prices for nearly 8 weeks, and planned spending and travel starts to be done with those increased costs in mind. Whether it's in wage growth falling below inflation, record-low consumer sentiment, or in the higher gas prices rippling over to make other products cost more, you can't think that Americans are going to continue like nothing has changed since February.

Fewer jobs in many areas of Wisconsin under Trump 2.0

If you'd checked out the annual benchmarking of jobs numbers in Feburary and combined it with March's release of the "gold standard" Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), you noticed that jobs growth numbers were revised down, and had gone in decline in much of America during 2025.

You'll notice that Wisconsin is among those states losing jobs, which means that we should have expected that the growth we were seeing reported in Wisconsin jobs numbers in 2025 was also likely to be revised away. And indeed, when the January benchamrked jobs data for Wisconsin was released earlier this month, it showed a sizable decline.

That's not good, and like the US jobs picture overall, it got worse in Wisconsin in February.

When you look at the trend over the recent years, you can see where the revisions really start to kick in around the start of Trump term 2.0, and the declines in February took away any gains that might have happened in January (although I strongly suspect they're just seasonal adjustments).

The revisions also show up in the sector data, especially in manufacturing, where the newly revised data shows that 2025 was a third straight year of notable job losses for Wisconsin manufacturing.

The new data also shows that jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector hit its post-COVID peak in October 2024, and has had a small decline in the 16 months measured since then.

One of the few sectors to see significant job growth in the last year in Wisconsin has been the construction sector, which not only continued the strength it had during the last 3 years of the Joe Biden presidency, but has kicked into higher gear since November, with over 5,000 jobs added in the following 3 months.

Wisconsin's growth in construction jobs continued last year even as the sector had US job growth as a whole go flat in 2025. Not sure why we're getting all this growth in our area for construction (I'd guess some of it is likely data centers, and some is likely the fact that Milwaukee is among the hottest housing markets in America), but worthy to see if that holds for the rest of 2026 as gas prices and other inflation are likely to make construction costs go higher.

It also makes me interested in seeing how Wisconsin's tax filing numbers look from the revenue side. We know that there was a decrease in income tax revenue of more than 30% for February 2026 vs February 2025, and while that reflects new tax cuts passed in the last state budget, are we also starting to see a decline in income tax withholdings if we have fewer Wisconsinites working? It seems like that's something we need to have answered before we proceed with any additional tax cuts, because a lack of revenues would make the projected $2.5 billion budget surplus from January go away quickly.

So if it seems like things have been slow in the Wisconsin jobs market and that we are largely stuck in place (if not outright declining), that's because it largely has been. And that was before the bombs started falling in Iran and gas prices neared $4 a gallon in our state. Not that we're alone among states that are struggling during Trump 2.0, but it does seem like things have to be changed from the trajectory they're on today if we want Wisconsin to get back to increasing jobs and improving our quality of life. Unless you're in construction, of course.

Inflation up, wages down for March, will continue in April. And the stock market doesn't care

We got INFLATION WATCH back in recent days, as the first reports from March are now coming in. And after a lot of concern about rising oil prices in the financial markets last month, now that we are seeing large price increases be reported, the markets are strangely unconcerned.

Start with the business side. While the Wall Street "experts" claimed Monday's report on the Producer Price Increase increase wasn't as much as expected, it’s still the 5th straight month that the PPI rose by at least 0.4%. And the 12-month change in PPI reached 4% for the first time under Trump 2.0.

In addition, March was only the first step in the increases in gas prices since the bombs started falling on Iran. As of April 15, AAA says that gasoline has gone up by 11%, and diesel up more than 13%. So it’s likely that April will show another increase in producer prices, and given that April 2025 had a decrease in PPI, the year-over-year change is likely to be well above 4% the next time we get that report.

That PPI report came after last week’s first look at prices at the consumer level.

The consumer price index increased a seasonally adjusted 0.9% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 3.3%, pushed by a 10.9% surge in energy costs. Both numbers were in line with the Dow Jones consensus. The annual rate was the highest since April 2024 and up from 2.4% in February.

However, excluding food and energy, core prices rose much less – just 0.2% for the month and 2.6% from a year ago, both 0.1 percentage point below forecast, indicating that underlying inflation was contained. There even were even pockets of outright price declines, as medical care, personal care, and used cars and trucks all fell during the month.

The Iran conflict was the story for the monthly inflation reading, as gasoline soared 21.2%, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the headline price increase, according to the BLS.

But even with slightly tamer core prices, a 2.6% increase is still higher than pre-COVID levels, and not much different than the 2.8% year-over-year increase we had in March 2025. It's also still elevated compared to the pre-COVID increases of 2% or below.

And this is before higher transportation prices for non-gasoline products can be passed ahead to consumers, so I wouldn't expect things to be better on the inflation front in April or coming months.

In addition, that 0.9% increase in consumer prices dwarfs the 0.2% increase in average hourly wages for March, meaning an inflation-adjusted loss of 0.6% for last month, and dropping real wage growth near 0% for the last year.

While year-over-year average hourly wages aren’t losing ground vs inflation like it was in 2021, 2022 and early 2023, I’ll also note that workers were still getting 4-5%+ wage increases over 12 months. And those raises were after a significant re-set of higher wages after the COVID pandemic broke out in early 2020.

Now we’re back to the 2018-2019 levels of 3.5% nominal wage growth, except inflation is much higher than we had in the late 2010s. That seems like the worst of both worlds to me.

So why is the S+P closing above 7,000 and markets are acting like things are back to some pre-war normal (which wasn’t so great to begin with)? And why are people pretending that everything is fine because of.....hopes for peace and AI boosterism? Here in the real world, prices are still going up from an already-higher level, wage growth isn’t keeping up with those higher prices, and there’s not much evidence that business will be able to pass on their higher costs to consumers later this year in order to maintain profits.

I don't get what's going on, and it's no wonder that we see record low consumer sentiment in a time when the markets want to live in a Bubble where the facts in the Real America don't have to seep in.

Supreme Taylor win is especially impressive outside of Milwaukee and Dane County

Obviously, a 20-point win in a statewide election in Wisconsin is near-unprecedented over the last couple of decades. So let's look at a few facts and figures from Chris Taylor's epic blowout of Maria Lazar in last week's Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

First, Taylor nearly doubled up the blowout margins that Susan Crawford put up in April 2025's Supreme Court election. And not surprisingly, that boost in margin was widespread throughout the state, as shown by J. Miles Coleman of the Center for Politics of the University of Virginia. In addition to comparisons to last year's high-turnout race, Coleman also looked at the result vs another double-digit win in Supreme Court race with similar statewide vote totals, which was Jill Karofsky's win over Dan Keklly in 2020.

Coleman goes on to point out that the Dem-backed candidate continued to make gains in the Milwaukee suburbs, which used to give massive margins to Republican candidates until the Trump era.

Using 2020 as our baseline year, 3 of the 5 counties that swung most to Taylor from Karofsky were large urban or suburban counties in the Milwaukee area. The first was Milwaukee County itself, followed by Ozaukee while Waukesha came in fourth place. Ozaukee is the least Republican of the so-called “WOW” counties, the traditionally very Republican suburban counties located north and west of Milwaukee. Each of those three counties, Milwaukee, Waukesha, and Ozaukee, got at least 15 percentage points more “liberal” over the past 6 years. In absolute terms, it was notable that Ozaukee County finally changed sides this year after Democratic-aligned candidates have been getting closer to winning it, and that Waukesha County, which would reliably give Republicans and conservative candidates three-to-one margins before the Trump era, only backed Lazar by a 54%-46% margin. That continued suburban movement stands out as the clearest source of Democrats’ expanding coalition.

In fact, Taylor became the first Dem-supported candidate to win Ozaukee County for the first time since LBJ's landslide in 1964. And it continued the steady gains Dems have been making in the WOW Counties over the last 7 years of Supreme Court races.

As Coleman also mentions, the Dems kept increasing vote share in Milwaukee County on Tuesday as well. But it's worth adding that Taylor's gains were in the suburbs and not the City, as Taylor's 83.9% share wasn't much different than Crawford's 83.7% in April 2025, or Protasiewicz's 81.7% in April 2023. In addition, while Taylor got 2% more in Dane County than Dem-backed candidates in 2020, 2023, and 2025, it looks like there's a ceiling in Dane County in the low-80s.

But notice the one blip downward in Dane and the City of Milwaukee in the November 2024 election. That reflects the Trump campaign's gains among voters of color and younger, college-aged bros voters. And those gains have not held since then, especially on the UW-Madison campus. While turnout was down significantly on campus compared to November 2024, and Taylor had slightly less than half the votes Kamala Harris got in campus-area wards, it's nowhere near the falloff that has come for the GOP-supported candidates, as more than 6 out 7 Trump voters went away for Republicans in April 2026.

In addition to those deteriorations, an even worse sign for Republicans is that Taylor made major gains outstate, and outright won many areas that have voted GOP in the past. This includes the higher-population BOW Counties in the Fox Valley (Brown, Outagamie and Winnebago) as well as the combined total of Racine and Kenosha Counties in the southeast corner of the state. Both of those areas went for Trump in 2024, and Harris lost big in the aggregate over the other 63 counties of the state. Taylor won all of these areas of the state last week, including 58% in the BOW Counties.

Sure, I understand that April electorates aren't November ones, as more than twice as many Wisconsinites turned out for the 2024 presidential election compared to the lower-key Supreme Court blowout in April 2026. But midterm turnouts also aren't usually as high as we see in a presidential election, and that was certainly the case in 2022, despite hotly contested US Senate and Governor's races.

Total votes cast, Wisconsin
2022 US Senate 2,652,477
2024 Presidential 3,422,918
2026 Supreme Court (est) 1,506,442

If Trump and Johnson won those 2022 and 2024 races by approximately 1%, while Taylor won by more than 20% in 2026, I think it's not unreasonable to think that current conditions might be directly in between these areas for November 2026. That would be a shift to Dems of about 10 points compared to 2024, which likely means Dem trifecta at the state level, Bryan Steil in major trouble for Congressional District 1 (which Trump won by 4.5% in 2024), and Derrick Van Orden is likely to get Cooked in Distrrict 3 (he only beat Cooke by 2.8% in 2024). And it makes some other GOP districts within reach, given that the GOP will be running slugs like Glenn Grothman, Tony Wied, and whoever gets nominated to replace Tom Tiffany up North.

Long way between now and then, of course. But based on what we saw last Tuesday, you'd sure rather be the Dems than the Republicans in Wisconsin. Especially given how badly the GOP slipped in the parts of the state that they usually do best in.

We had higher prices and a slower economy even before the bombs started falling

After a sizable increase to start off 2026, there was a step back in February on income growth. But Americans did keep spending in the month before bombs started to fall on Iran.

Personal income decreased $18.2 billion (0.1 percent at a monthly rate) in February, according to estimates released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI)— personal income less personal current taxes—decreased $18.3 billion (0.1 percent), and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $103.2 billion (0.5 percent)….

Personal outlays—the sum of PCE, personal interest payments, and personal current transfer payments—increased $106.5 billion in February. Personal saving was $931.5 billion in February, and the personal saving rate—personal saving as a percentage of DPI—was 4.0 percent.

If you balance it out with a relatively strong first month of this year, personal income has risen compared to the end of 2025, and while growth in work-related income is lower than what we had in 2024, we are still seeing the number be safely above zero.

The main reasons that overall incomes fell in February was due to a drop in a big source of investment income, and Trump/GOP’s cuts in assistance to pay for health care.

Personal dividend income decreased $39.7 billion, reflecting dividend information from company financial statements.
• Personal current transfer receipts decreased $21.6 billion, led by a decrease of $34.4 billion in other government social benefits reflecting estimated Affordable Care Act enrollments.

That lack of ACA assistance was already a strain on a lot of Americans’ finances, but the lack of help is now compounded by something we saw in another part of the income and spending report. That showed prices were rising at a significant rate even before oil and gas prices spiked in March.

…[W]hen taking elevated inflation into account, spending rose just 0.1% from January, when it was flat.

Thursday’s report also showed that inflation remained stubbornly higher than typical: The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index – the inflation gauge the Federal Reserve uses for its 2% target rate – climbed 0.4% from January, which held the annual rate at 2.8%.

Excluding food and energy prices, which tend to be quite volatile, the core PCE price index also rose 0.4%, bringing the annual rate to 3% from 2.9% the month before.

“Core prices are actually gaining momentum, up 4.4% annualized the past three months, compared with 3.4% in the past six months … and this is before spillover pressures from the Iran war,” Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note to investors. “Goods prices popped 0.7%, the most in about four years, indicating some lingering tariff effects.”

UGH! There goes any increased tax refund you may have had this year.

And there goes the one-month bump in the personal savings rate that happened in January. It’s back down to the 4.0% level, and significantly lower than what Americans were saving when Trump declared his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April.

Also notice how the 2022 savings rate declined as gas prices and general inflation exploded in the first half of that year. Seems like a good guide for where we are going in the next few of these reports.

On Friday, we will get our first indication of how much overall prices grew last month when we have the March release of the Consumer Price Index. And last week’s strong jobs report also included a lame hourly wage increase of 0.2%, which likely means real wages are going to decline by quite a bit, as prices are likely to rise by much more than that.

But even that March report is only going to show the first few weeks of the price spikes, and not the continued increase into April. It’s not a good sign when inflation-adjusted income and spending growth was tame through February, because we know it’s going to get worse in March, April, and likely beyond.

Less immigration means less population growth for Wisconsin

Recently, the Census Bureau released their annual estimates of population for all counties in the United States, as well as the reasons behind why population changed. And much like the rest of America, Wisconsin saw its population growth slow down in 2025, largely due to Trumpian policies against immigration.

Wisconsin saw an estimated more than 18,000 people move to the state from abroad each year from 2022 through 2024, according to Census data.

But the number of people who moved to Wisconsin from other countries dropped from 19,395 in 2024 to 7,260 in 2025, Census Bureau figures show.

As a result, overall population growth slowed from an estimated 26,818 in 2024 to an estimated 15,619 in 2025, the Census Bureau reports.

As Wisconsin Public Radio points out, Wisconsin continued to get more people from other states vs those who moved out of Wisconsin, but a 62.6% drop in net immigration caused the decline in population growth.

The third part of the population change equation involves the “natural change” of births vs deaths in the state, which added 1,161 people to Wisconsin in 2025 (59,167 births, 58,006 deaths). That finally got Wisconsin back into the positive for the 2020s in natural change after a sizable loss at the start of the decade when there was that COVID thing going on.

At the halfway point of the 2020s, Wisconsin has seen our population go up by 78,464 to nearly 5,972,800. That’s not fast enough to keep Wisconsin from being on track to lose a member of Congress after 2030, and the reduced immigration to the state is worrisome when it comes to future growth, because that’s accounted for 6 out 7 additional Wisconsinites over the last 5 years.

As mentioned, the other part of that Census Bureau report showed the changes in population for all US counties, and in Wisconsin, the four counties with the largest percentage increases in population were small, rural ones.

5 fastest growing counties 2025, Wisconsin

Florence Co. +1.41%
Adams Co. +0.87%
Tempealeau Co. +0.79%
Lafayette Co. +0.76%
Ozaukee Co. +0.73%

But those top 4 counties only accounted for a total increase of 627 people. Meanwhile, the 6th-fastest growing county by percentage was Dane County (+0.69%), but the home county of UW-Madison added the most people out of any county in Wisconsin last year, more than doubling the increase in the next-closest county.

5 largest increases in population 2025, Wisconsin
Dane County +4,050
Brown County +1,552
Waukesha Co. +1,444
Outagamie Co. +1,109
Winnebago Co. +924

Stretch it out over the last 5 years, and Dane County also has a sizable lead, adding more people than the next 4-highest counties combined.

5 largest increases in population 2020-2025, Wisconsin
Dane County +28,868
Waukesha Co. +10,221
Brown County +7,067
Outagamie Co.+5,194
St. Croix Co. +4,742

And for those who might find Dane County's continued growth to be a scary thing, you can pour your misery down on me.

But there is a flip side on that statistic, as Milwaukee County's population declined by 107 in 2025, despite gaining from both immigration (+1,973) and more births than deaths (+2,564). That's because Milwaukee County lost 4,697 people through domestic migration last year, which also likely explains a lot of the gains in Waukesha and Ozaukee Counties. And that trend was even larger earlier in the 2020s, as Milwaukee County suffered even larger declines from domestic migration in the first 4 years of the decade.

Change in population, Milwaukee County 2020-2024
Domestic Migration -41,672
Immigration +17,332
Natural Change +9,885

So the crackdown in immigration is something that can especially hamper Milwaukee County's chances at growth, as having newcomers from other countries limited losses from people moving out. And the lesser amounts of immigration also hit Dane County, as it barely added 2,000 people from other countries in 2025 after adding an average of more than 4,000 a year from 2020-2024.

If we continue to see lower immigration, it's going to be a headwind on population and economic growth for as long as that continues. That's true in both the US and in Wisconsin, and it's something that needs to be mentioned more as part of the conversation surrounding what TrumpWorld wants to do to make the country whiter regarding foreign-born people that are in our country. But even Dane County's strong growth got affected by the crackdown in immigration, only adding slightly more than 2,000 people from international migration