Will Congress Act This Week to Save Thousands of Jobs?

If you got a copy of the Sunday New York Times or read it online, you may have seen this September 26 headline: “Job Loss Looms as Part of Stimulus Act Expires.” The article concerns a portion of the Recovery Act funding that has been used to help low income families in a variety of ways, including providing funding to initiate or expand subsidized private sector jobs that are designed to enable unemployed parents to move from welfare to work.

Wisconsin is one of the many states that will be adversely affected if Congress doesn’t act quickly to extend this funding, which is referred to as the TANF Emergency Contingency Fund (ECF) and is scheduled to expire on September 30.  The last hope for extending it is to include an additional year of funding in the Continuing Resolution that Congress needs to pass this week to keep the federal government from grinding to a halt.

Economist Estimates Two-year $3.1 Billion Wisconsin Deficit

A short paper released Wednesday by Professor Andrew Reschovsky, an economist at UW-Madison's La Follette Institute, explains that a conservative estimate of the structural deficit in Wisconsin’s next biennium is $3.1 billion. That figure approximates the gap between revenue and spending in 2011-13 if one assumes 3 percent per year revenue growth and modest increases in spending to maintain current services. It represents a shortfall of about 10 percent of projected spending needs.

State Agency Budget Requests

Finalization of the 2011-13 Wisconsin state budget is likely nearly a year away, but it is already time for state agencies to make their budget requests. The Wheeler Report has gathered the state agency budget requests that have already been published and the list is below. New state agency budget requests are added to the Wheeler site as they are released.

Finance Committee Approves Use of Additional Recovery Act Dollars

In a very brief meeting today, the Joint Finance Committee approved four requests by the Governor, totaling about $23.6 million, for the use of funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).  Each of these very brief descriptions links to the relevant Legislative Fiscal Bureau paper describing the Governor’s recommendations:

• $19.3 million for three programs that provide training and related services to dislocated workers.
• $1.8 million for the Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) initiative, which funds local programs relating to obesity and chronic disease prevention, tobacco control activities, and strategic communication for achieving CPPW goals.
• $1.4 million for early childhood education and care coordination.
• $1.1 million to improve data exchange capabilities between the Wisconsin immunization registry (WIR) and health care providers.

Jon Peacock,
Budget Project Director

Census Bureau Releases New Poverty Data

Today the U.S. Census Bureau updated its Current Population Survey (CPS) dataset with new information on poverty, income, and health insurance. As was widely expected, there’s been a large jump in the number of Americans living in poverty. The Wisconsin Council on Children and Families has done some rapid-response number crunching since the dataset was released this morning, and has already issued a press release. Here are some of the highlights:

Do You Like the Wisconsin Budget Project? Really Like Us?

It may sound insecure, but we're hoping you like the Wisconsin Budget Project -- on Facebook, that is. The Wisconsin Budget Project has joined the rest of the world in getting a Facebook page. Visit the page and "like" the Wisconsin Budget Project and you can get news about state fiscal policy, updates on budget actions, and news about Budget Project releases in your Facebook news feed.

Click here to go to the WBP Facebook page.

Senate Vote Tuesday on Eliminating $17 Billion Revenue Source for Health Care Reform

An amendment that will be voted on Tuesday in conjunction with a small business bill would undo one of the revenue sources for health care reform, requiring $17 billion of cuts in public health, prevention programs and insurance coverage. The revenue raising measure that the amendment would repeal broadens a requirement for businesses to report payments to vendors of $600 or more, thereby discouraging the underreporting of income by vendors. The expanded reporting requirement is expected to increase tax revenue by $17.1 billion over the next ten years by improving the ability of the IRS to keep track of business income.

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote tomorrow on an amendment by Senator Mike Johanns (R-NE) that would repeal the reporting requirement, and significantly weaken the health care reform law in the process. The Senate is also likely to vote on an alternative offered by Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), which would significantly scale back the tax provision to reduce its scope and its paperwork requirements, but would make up for the lost revenue by reducing excessive tax subsidies and loopholes for oil companies rather than undermining health care reform.  A new WCCF blog post describes the Johanns amendment and its implications.

New Data Shows Wisconsin Still Has a Lean Public Sector

Wisconsin continues its decade-long trend of having fewer state and local employees than the national average, according to a new issue brief by the Wisconsin Budget Project. The analysis is based on U.S. Census Bureau data and shows that Wisconsin has 51.8 state and local government employees (FTEs) per thousand residents, 4.4 percent below the national average of 54.2 FTEs. Wisconsin ranks 38th in this measure nationally, meaning only 12 states have fewer state and local government FTEs per capita.

New FY 2010 Tax Totals Are Right on the Money, Thanks to Corporate Profits

The Department of Revenue (DOR) has posted new estimates of General Fund tax collections in fiscal year 2010, which ended on June 30. Amazingly, the latest figure is within less than one one-hundredth of a percent of the January 2010 projection by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau (trailing that estimate by just $411,000).  On the other hand, the amounts generated by particular types of taxes vary greatly from the January projections.

There's a New Website in Town

There’s actually two new websites in (cyber) town that we wanted to draw your attention to, both offering information and analysis about stimulus funds spent in Wisconsin.