MADISON (WKOW) — While divided government will return in 2023, the final days of a Congress controlled by Democrats will be defined by a budget debate that one Wisconsin congressman says could go beyond the current deadline for keeping the federal government funded.
The 2023 federal fiscal year began October 1. While Congress has yet to pass a budget for the year, the government remains funded because of a September resolution maintaining 2022 spending levels through December 16.
Rep. Mark Pocan said when Congress returned from its Thanksgiving break, budget talks will resume. In an interview, Pocan said House Republicans were less active than the rest of their colleagues on Capitol Hill.
“The Senate Republicans and Democrats seem to be working together, trying to get something done before the end of the year,” Pocan said. “But right now, we’re having a little bit of a hesitation from the House Republican leadership, so that could be a hold up.”
Following the midterm elections, Republicans are set to take a narrow majority in the House. There’s intrigue over whether the GOP House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, can rally enough Republicans to reach the 218 votes necessary to become House speaker.
According to the Washington Post, 31 Republicans voted against McCarthy in the vote to name a caucus leader. Rep. Glenn Grothman said the ongoing talks over leadership were secondary to GOP concerns about the level of spending in the Democrats’ budget.
“Right now, the bill that’s before Congress is like an eight or nine percent spending increase,” Grothman said. “And I think the Republicans are understandably a little bit concerned about that.”
Grothman said he was confident House Republicans would eventually have the votes to name Rep. Kevin McCarthy House speaker. While 31 Republicans in the caucus voted against McCarthy remaining House GOP leader, Grothman said there were no better options to keep the caucus united with a razor-thin majority.
“I think he’s the best guy we have right now,” Grothman said. “I wish we would have brought up more issues during the campaign, I think we would have done better. But obviously, he got us the majority. And if you look at the other prospective candidates, I don’t think they’re quite ready for that position yet.”
As for what he wanted the party to pursue once it’s seated with that new majority, Grothman said he hoped to prioritize the economy, agriculture and education.
“The inflation is still out of control. It’s the one thing that we have to do over the next year,” Grothman said. “The next issue in the Farm Bill is something that didn’t get done. That’s always done on a bipartisan basis. Hopefully, in the field of education, we can aim things a little more skills based.”
‘A huge racial problem is…just preposterous’
Once Republicans take their House majority, the next two years will be defined by how Washington functions under divided government. During the campaign leading up to this month’s midterm election, Grothman called President Joe Biden the most divisive president he’s seen.
At an October 31 stop while campaign for Sen. Ron Johnson in Portage, Grothman made the claim, citing Biden’s inaugural address.
“He talked about racism four times and white supremacy once. Can you believe that?” Grothman said. “I mean, it’s always Selma, Alabama in 1955 with that guy.”
When asked what is an appropriate way to discuss the nation’s history of racial discrimination, Grothman maintained talking too much about racism would cause young people to feel shame about their roots. He prefaced his comments by noting he saw few White immigrants at a recent naturalization ceremony he attended.
“I’d be surprised if there were more than five or six of European ancestry,” Grothman said. “People come around here from all around the world and thrive. As a matter of fact, if you look, people coming here from Asian background, India, China, Japan, and even do better financially than the native born.”
“So the idea that we have a huge racial problem is, quite frankly, just preposterous.”
When asked how that addresses ongoing racial disparities, such as the student testing score gap, or lower rates of Black homeownership, Grothman blamed single-family households.
According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Black children are more than twice as likely to grow up in a single-family home.
“If you’re not bringing up that topic. You’re not being serious about statistical disparities between different racial groups,” Grothman said. “And I think it’s, it’s time to stop the political correctness and say, ‘What can we do to make sure that all groups have good, strong, intact families?’
Underly rejects GOP funding trade-off
Republican leaders in the legislature believe they’re proposing a fair offer when it comes to education funding in the next state budget.
However, Wisconsin’s top education official says she believes it’s unreasonable to leverage public school funding in order to increase the number of private and charter school vouchers.
Education will be just one of many potential agrees of disagreement, and perhaps compromise, when the budget debate begins early next year, starting with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ budget.
With Wisconsin projected to have a $6.6 billion surplus, there’s enough to grant both GOP leaders and Evers’ wishes.
Republicans want to enact a sweeping, permanent income tax cut across all earning levels, moving the state closer to a flat tax. Evers’ top stated priorities are more funding for public schools and local governments.
GOP leaders, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, said Tuesday at a WisPolitics luncheon they’d support more public school funding, but want Evers to support school choice expansion in return.
“Look, I am willing to go to our caucus and advocate for more money for public schools,” Vos said. “I think that’s good for our state. I think school choice is good for our state, it’s kind of settled law. That doesn’t seem to me to be an outrageous position on either side.”
State Superintendent Jill Underly said in an interview with 27 News she didn’t think it was a fair trade-off. Underly said public school funding is required by the constitution, and should not be a bargaining tool to expand private and charter school vouchers.
“It’s kind of like a public park or public golf course; they’re for everybody,” Underly said. “And, so when you have this trade-off, like, ‘we’ll give you money for your public golf course, but you have to make sure we’re paying off these private golf courses too,’ that’s not what this is about.”
The Department of Public Instruction (DPI), which Underly oversees, requested more than $2 billion in additional state funding for the next two-year state budget.
Underly said the request was fair because the Republican re-write of the current budget did not provide additional spending dollars for schools. The budget instead provided more state funding, but at the same time reduced how much districts could levy in property taxes as part of Wisconsin’s school funding formula.
Republicans said schools were getting enough extra funding through federal pandemic aid.
“It really comes down to resources and opportunities,” Underly said. “The wealthier districts are going to provide more opportunities to their students, so they’re able to learn better.”
Addressing slipping student performance
Earlier this month, the DPI released annual report cards for the state’s schools and districts. The vast majority of the 377 districts met or exceeded expectations.
But while 24 districts moved up one or more categories, 84 others dropped at least one category. Underly acknowledged state educators have to work to do in the ongoing effort to help students return to pre-pandemic levels of performance.
“Certainly, we need to get more resources to our schools so that they can address some of the learning needs that have arisen out of the pandemic,,” Underly said. “Certainly, there were needs before the pandemic, and we need to get better instructional materials in the hands of kids better training to the teachers.”
Underly repeatedly returned to the subject of resources, even in the case of Milwaukee Public Schools, which received more than $800 million in federal pandemic aid. Underly said districts can only address so many issues in communities where children are more likely to have housing and food insecurity.
“Our lowest achieving districts are often our poorest school districts,” Underly said. “So we need to make sure again, it goes back to resources, getting the people in places, the specialists, the programming, so that those kids can certainly be on par with better off communities.”
Milwaukee and Beloit were among the districts with a startling percent of students underperforming. In both districts, about two-thirds of students performed at ‘below basic’ levels in their 2021-22 report cards.
Underly, again, said the biggest culprit was a insufficient resources. It sets the stage for education to be one of the most heated areas of debate during next year’s budget process.
“When we look at some of the communities that are under resourced, like Milwaukee, like Beloit,” Underly said. “We really need to work with those school boards in order to make sure that, you know, they’re they’re implementing programs and curriculum and after-school programming, getting mental health, early childhood programming, all these things that, unfortunately, cost money.”
The $6.6 billion question
Education will be just one of several areas where Evers and GOP leaders are disagreement over how to best use Wisconsin’s projected record-high surplus of $6.6 billion.
Evers and Democrats want to prioritize funding for K-12 schools and local governments. Republicans are seeking ‘transformational’ tax cuts at all income levels.
“If you look at the state agency requests, you could fulfill all of them and still have plenty of money left over,” Jessie Opoien, Capitol Bureau Chief at The Cap Times, said. “But we cover Wisconsin politics. So we know that’s not how it’s going to work. We’re still going to have some fights about the budget.”
Vos and LeMahieu have said they’re willing to seek a trade-off on education funding. At the WisPolitics panel, they said Evers had recently called them, opening the door to more communication between executive and legislative leadership.
Patrick Marley, who covers voting issues for the Washington Post, noted the money exists to fund both Democratic and GOP priorities. He noted Evers signed the previous two budgets Republicans largely rewrote, including tax cuts.
“But those tax cuts were geared particularly for the middle class and the lower classes,” Marley said. “What Republicans are talking about now is something that’s really broad and would help out the wealthy quite a bit. Evers was going to be a lot more skeptical of that. Maybe he’d make a trade off if you get enough money for schools.”
Another dynamic to follow is whether the Senate, where Republicans now have a two-thirds supermajority, will exercise its newfound ability to impeach elected officials and state officers.
Opoien said such a move could be risky, citing public blowback to Republicans stripping the governor and attorney general of powers after the 2018 election when Evers and fellow Democrat Josh Kaul won statewide offices.
“It could be perceived as a power grab,” Opoien said. “[Voters] didn’t like the idea of any branch of government exerting too much power and taking it away from other branches. And I think you might run into that same issue with impeachment.”
Republicans have already signaled they won’t bring back election-related bills Evers vetoed in the previous session. Marley said there could be compromise on smaller-scale bills, such as clarifying what is a proper witness address on absentee ballot applications, or even on drop boxes.
Marley noted an agreement on drop boxes was less likely, given last year’s state supreme court ruling that deemed drop boxes outside of clerks’ offices were illegal.
“There’s room for compromise there. But Republicans now are very happy with that Supreme Court decision,” Marley said. “They might not want to touch that issue.”
