State Will Lose Another $1.6 Billion by Not Improving BadgerCare. --BECAUSE Repugs are mean

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Friday, May 7, 2021
GOP Lawmakers Formally Slash Hundreds of Evers' Budget Ideas. State Will Lose Another $1.6 Billion by Not Improving BadgerCare.

The Legislature’s Republican-led Joint Finance Committee’s vote Thursday to slash $3.4 billion from Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed 2021-23 state budget would leave the state without much-needed services if at least some of those provisions aren’t added back, supporters of those measures said.

The committee eliminated nearly 400 measures proposed by the Democratic governor, cutting a broad range of proposed programs that would address a wide range of needs supporters said must be addressed sooner than later.

The committee’s largest budget reduction was the elimination of a proposed expansion of the state’s BadgerCare Plus insurance program. It would provide health insurance coverage to an additional 90,000 people in the state, and accepting the federal Medicaid money to pay for the program would have netted the state $1.6 billion during the next two years.

“I’ve been just so frustrated with this state’s stance,” Marnie Hersrud, an Eau Claire resident, said of the state Legislature’s repeated refusal to accept federal Medicaid money to pay for a BadgerCare expansion. "You would think after all these years, and after other states—and Republican states—that have signed on, that we would too."

Instead of proceeding with the governor’s proposed budget, the Joint Finance Committee will form the next budget from the current one, which was largely written by Republican lawmakers in 2019 and altered by Evers through a series of vetoes. The committee will continue work on the state’s two-year budget in upcoming weeks before forwarding its recommendations to the full Legislature.

—Reported by Christina Lieffring and Julian Emerson