The Joint Finance Committee concluded its consideration of the state’s biennial budget in a session that stretched from Tuesday into early Wednesday morning and included committee approvals for some of the most controversial budgetary motions, including those pertaining to declining federal Medicaid expansion money and the full expansion of a private school voucher program.
Tuesday’s JFC session was scheduled to be the last in the committee’s budgetary process and stretched into early Wednesday morning after Republican committee members broke to hold negotiations on private school voucher expansion and tax reforms for approximately 10 hours. The negotiations were held to put an end to disagreements among Republican state legislators on the controversial issues slated for the session.
Prior to the lengthy negotiation process, the JFC passed a Republican motion to decline federal funding for state Medicaid expansion in a 12-4 party line vote. The motion’s approval came after a Democratic motion to accept the federal funding failed on a similar party line vote.
The approved Republican motion mirrors an early proposal from Walker suggesting the biennial budget change BadgerCare, the state’s Medicaid system, to include all state citizens with an income at or below the federal poverty level. Anybody making an income above the federal poverty level would then be required to purchase insurance through federally run insurance exchanges.
The offered federal funding would have allowed the state to expand Medicaid to anybody at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level and would have cost the state approximately $119 million less than Walker’s plan.
The current BadgerCare system insures all adults who have children and make at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. It also insures some, but not all, childless adults making less than the federal poverty level.
The approved Republican proposal would allow the state to avoid federal funding promises that are not always kept as well as to insure everyone under the federal poverty level regardless of whether they have children, according to Walker and Republican supporters.
“Under our plan, everyone in Wisconsin will have access to affordable health-care options, and we are building upon Wisconsin’s strong track record of providing affordable health care to our people,” Walker said in a statement. “These reforms strengthen Wisconsin’s safety net for those in need, while protecting our taxpayers from unnecessary risk and the fiscal uncertainty coming out of Washington, D.C.”
State Democrats heavily criticized the JFC’s decision to pass on the chance to receive the federal health-care money, saying the decision ignored the potential benefits to citizens in the middle class and those who would have received jobs in the health-care field if state Medicaid programs would expand.
State Democrats were also strongly opposed to the JFC’s decision to expand private voucher schools statewide instead of keeping them in Milwaukee and Racine, where they currently exist.
The ultimate voucher school proposal, which resulted from Republican JFC members’ negotiations outside the scheduled session, would introduce the private school voucher option to every district in the state. The approved motion represents a change from the previous proposal that would only expand the program to nine additional school districts.
The voucher school program is designed to allow qualified low-income students who attend poor performing public schools to instead attend higher performing private schools using vouchers drawn from tax money.
The approved program would be limited to 500 students in the first year of implementation and 1000 students in every year after.
Additionally, the program would only be open to students in households making at or below 185 percent of the poverty level and any per-student funding increase given to a voucher school would also be given to the public school where the student could have attended.
The proposal, which was also passed in the JFC along party lines, drew most criticism from Democrats, including state Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, for the funding it would take from public schools and the lack of transparency in voucher schools in comparison with state public schools.
“It’s a disaster for our public education system by its promotion of a statewide private voucher school system which siphons money from the public schools to private schools which are unaccountable and can pick and choose students, shutting out disabled and non-traditional learners,” Risser said in a statement.
But state Republicans and Walker support the system for the options it will give Wisconsin children that supporters say would be better off out of failing public schools.
“[The] vote by the Joint Finance Committee … gives more parents choices and alternatives to underperforming schools in our state,” Walker said in a statement. “Because of our tough, but prudent, decisions, we are improving the quality of our children’s education system, and we’re moving Wisconsin forward.”
The JFC also passed motions to implement other statewide changes in previously held sessions, including a two-year tuition freeze for the UW System and the ability for the state government to sell UW System buildings without approval by the system’s Board of Regents.
Now that the JFC has officially concluded making revisions to the biennial budget, the budget will pass to the full state Assembly and then the state Senate for consideration. The budget will likely pass both Republican-controlled houses of the state Legislature and then move to Walker.
The governor has broad veto power in the last portion of the budget cycle and can essentially rewrite certain portions as he sees fit.
The Assembly portion of the budget process will likely begin within the next two weeks.
