The time has come once again for the crafting of the biennial state budget.
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu was on WOMT’s Be My Guest program yesterday, where he spoke about the budget process and what the Senate is looking to do with the 2025-2027 budget.
While the Finance Committee is starting with a $4 billion surplus, the 6th District Senator from Oostburg did note that they are already fighting an uphill battle.
“The challenge that we have is if we do absolutely nothing, change no current law, just our cost to continue going into the next budget cycle is $2.3 billion over the two years,” Sen. LeMahieu noted.
With a lot of that coming from the upkeep of current services for Medicaid.
Also, sometime around the middle of May, the revenue estimates from the non-partisan fiscal bureau will come in.
“I’m a little concerned that the budget or that our revenues may be not as strong as they were projected the last time the fiscal bureau did it,” LeMahieu explained. “So we might not have as much money going forward to work with.”
That being said, Senator LeMahieu said he is looking forward to helping craft a “responsible budget…(with) hopefully some tax cuts in there and also investing in important priorities like K-12 and infrastructure, roads…health care.”
Each biennial budget comes to an end in June of odd years, so Sen. LeMahieu and his team hope to have a budget crafted and passed by Governor Tony Evers by the end of June.
There have been years where the budget was not finished on time, including Sen. LeMahieu’s first time putting one together.
In that situation, it took until September to get it completed.
“The good thing is the way Wisconsin law works is if a new budget isn’t passed by July 1st, we continue on the current budget. So we have some time,” he assured constituents.
You can learn more about the budget process by listening to the entire show at SeehaferPodcasts.com.
