Let’s use the state's historic surplus to lower costs now and stop bigger bills later

This article first appeared in The Recombobulation Area

With everything else happening around the world, you may have missed a major headline here in Wisconsin — one that’s already turning into a political football. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau now projects the state will end the 2025–27 biennium with a $2.37 billion general fund balance. That’s $1.53 billion more than expected when the budget passed. And, as usual, both parties are already racing to take credit.

But here’s what most Wisconsinites will hear when they see that number: Give our money back.

And I get it. For most families, the state’s “general fund balance” isn’t something you see. What you see is the envelope on the kitchen table — an escrow notice, the property tax bill, the referendum flyer from your child’s school, the grocery receipt making you do a double take. You see it in the quiet math you do in your head: what can wait, what can’t, what gets cut this month.

When people live with the stress of all of those things, a surplus doesn’t feel like “good news.” It feels like proof the system is taking more than it should, and still not delivering stability where it matters.

The problem is that “giving it back” can turn into a shell game if we’re not careful. If lawmakers use this moment for short-term tax cuts while refusing to fix the underlying pressures driving costs — as they’ve done for years — we’ll be right back here a year from now. People will still be paying more. Communities will still be scrambling. Politicians will still be blaming someone else.

We’ve got a historic surplus. Let’s use it to lower costs now and stop creating bigger bills later.

There’s a part that Madison doesn’t like to say out loud: Wisconsin’s budget can look “healthy” while people feel stressed because the burden doesn’t show up as a state line item a lot of the time. Sometimes, it shows up in your kid’s classroom. Or, it shows up when your city or township can’t keep staff, keep programs open, keep emergency services, or maintain buildings and roads without begging voters for funding every spring.

The loudest voices who too often are preaching “discipline” and “fiscal responsibility” are often the same ones who created a system where local property taxpayers are forced to pick up the tab for basic public services. School districts aren’t going from referendum to referendum because they’re reckless, they’re doing it because costs and needs continue to rise and the state keeps acting like inflation shouldn’t apply to classrooms. That’s been the reality for more than 15 years (with no end in sight.)

Last week, Republican state Rep. Mark Born and state Sen. Howard Marklein, the co-chairs of the powerful budget-writing Joint Committee on Finance, credited GOP “fiscal discipline,” while warning Wisconsinites not to commit to “ongoing spending using one-time money.” Yes, caution matters. But what they’re really saying is: don’t use new revenue to fix the systems that are breaking.

If Wisconsin truly has room to breathe, then we have to answer the obvious questions: why are our schools still scraping by? Why are working parents still drowning in childcare costs? Why are communities unable to make ends meet? A surplus doesn’t automatically mean Wisconsin is thriving. It can also mean Madison is stockpiling flexibility while families absorb the pain.

And instead of treating this surplus as a chance to stabilize the system, Republicans are already signaling they want to reopen old political fights — including repealing Gov. Tony Evers’ “400-year veto,” a move that gave school districts more flexibility to keep up with inflation and avoid constant crisis budgeting. That push isn’t coming from nowhere. It’s coming from the same top-down leadership that has controlled the Legislature for years: Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu.