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Walker’s Subsidies to Corporations that Outsource Jobs to Mexico

Posted by Jennifer Shilling, State Senator 32nd District
Jennifer Shilling, State Senator 32nd District
Jennifer Shilling serves as the Senate Democratic Leader and represents the 32nd
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on Wednesday, 29 April 2015
in Wisconsin

walker-no-jobsScandal-plagued WEDC agency linked to business outsourcing again.


MADISON – Multiple news reports have revealed that a Wisconsin company that received $370,000 in taxpayer subsidies from Gov. Walker’s Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) plans to cut 93 positions and outsource Wisconsin jobs to Tijuana, Mexico. The Eaton Corporation in Pewaukee, WI had previously outsourced 163 Wisconsin jobs to Mexico in 2013. Governor Walker serves as the Chairman of the WEDC.

At a time when Wisconsin is facing a $2.2 billion budget deficit, it is unacceptable that Republicans would provide taxpayer subsidies to a company with a history of outsourcing Wisconsin jobs. It’s time to start investing in Wisconsin families and stop subsiding corporations that outsource jobs.

While Gov. Walker continues to travel around the nation preparing for his presidential campaign, Wisconsin has plummeted economically. Recent reports have shown that family wages are declining, poverty rates have increased and Wisconsin has dropped to 40th in the country for job creation.

Rather than catering to out-of-state special interests, we need to invest in local businesses that are going to stay in Wisconsin and pay their workers a fair wage. Democrats remain committed to boosting family wages, creating quality jobs and investing in the 21st century infrastructure that is needed to move our state forward.

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A Business Owes Nothing in Taxes & Gets a State Check?

Posted by Kathleen Vinehout, State Senator 31st District
Kathleen Vinehout, State Senator 31st District
Kathleen Vinehout of Alma is an educator, business woman, and farmer who is now
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on Monday, 27 April 2015
in Wisconsin

kohls-corpWhy doesn’t the press cover what’s happening with refundable tax credits? This week Sen. Kathleen Vinehout writes about tax credits – the difference between non-refundable and refundable tax credits, the impact on the budget and Wisconsin taxpayers.


MADISON - “Why doesn’t the press cover what’s happening with refundable tax credits?” I asked the journalist. We were chatting about what I found in the state budget.

“Because the press doesn’t understand them,” she told me.

“Doesn’t understand them?” I thought. “There has to be an easy way to describe what’s happening...”

Imagine if you had no state tax taken out of your paycheck. You filed your tax return but you owed nothing. Now imagine the state sent you a refund check. Wow!

This is like a refundable tax credit. A company owes little to nothing in taxes but gets a check back from the state - cash from the taxpayers of Wisconsin.

Tax credits are different than deductions on your income tax form. The credit is subtracted dollar for dollar from the tax you owe - simple subtraction. You owe $1,000. You have a $500 credit. You now owe $500.

But what if your credit was $10,300,000? Under a refundable tax credit you would end up with a check for $10,299,000.

According to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) Wisconsin has two refundable tax credit programs: “Enterprise Zone Tax Credits” and “Jobs Tax Credits.” The “Enterprise Zone” used to refer to a designated place in which eligible businesses received tax credits for economic activity. In recent years it morphed into a credit to designated companies for jobs created and retained, training, capital expenditures and purchases from Wisconsin vendors.

A recent publication from the LFB details the 18 recent recipients of “Enterprise Zone Awards”. The table below is in millions of dollars:

Mercury Marine $65.0

Kohl’s Corporation $62.5

Quad/Graphics $46.0

Oshkosh Corporation $35.0

W Solar Group $28.0

Fincantieri Marine Group $28.0

Bucyrus $20.0

Uline $18.6

Kestrel Aircraft Company $18.0

Plexus $15.0

Northstar Medical Radioisotopes $14.0

Amazon.com.dedc LLC $10.3

Weather Shield Manufacturing $8.0

The report also details five other designated “Enterprise Zones”: 1) Insinkerator; 2) Ashley Furniture; 3) Medline Industries, Inc.; 4) Trane; and 5) Exact Science. The LFB reported in January that Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) had not yet entered into contracts with these five companies to finalize the amount awarded.

WEDC is authorized to designate up to 20 “Zones” and the Governor designates an additional ten “Zones” in the budget. The Administration estimates this action would have a ten-year price tag of $168.8 million for Wisconsin taxpayers.

The Governor also wants to take a nonrefundable tax credit (economic development tax credits) and convert it into a refundable tax credit. WEDC is currently authorized to spend $164.2 million on the “economic development tax credits”.

Why rush to create NEW refundable tax credits? Perhaps the Manufacturing and Ag Tax Credit has something to do with the rush. A late budget amendment in 2011 created this credit targeted at manufacturing companies. The tax credit takes tax rates for manufacturing and ag corporations down to .04% by 2016.

What happens if you owe less than 1% on your profits? Pretty soon your tax obligation is so small another tax credit isn’t help much. Step in the refundable tax credit. You owe nothing? You still get a check.

How much might these companies have paid if not for the tax credits slipped into the budget in 2011? The LFB estimated the fiscal impact of just the Manufacturing and Ag credit at $509 million in the coming budget.

So what’s lost to Wisconsin taxpayers when the companies owing little to nothing in taxes cash their refundable tax credit checks?

School funding reform for one – the manufacturing tax credit money would more than cover changes in the school funding formula and hold harmless the wealthier suburban schools. The University of Wisconsin System for another – the credits awarded in the table above would more than cover the Governor’s proposed university system cuts.

Fixing things like the state parks, Wisconsin Public TV and Radio, Family Care and IRIS could be done with the money given in credits to just Plexus. Dollars headed to Uline could instead fund SeniorCare and the School Violence Prevention Program.

Decisions made to give dollars away to profitable corporations have a big impact on future choices.

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The Party of Big Government

Posted by Mike McCabe, Blue Jean Nation
Mike McCabe, Blue Jean Nation
Mike McCabe is the founder and president of Blue Jean Nation and author of Blue
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on Monday, 27 April 2015
in Wisconsin

dems-v-repubDistrust of government is in our country’s DNA. The GOP has successfully passed themselves off as the party of less government, but the truth is that both major parties want big government to work for a privileged few at the expense of the many.


MADISON - Suspicion and distrust of government is a core American value. It is in our country’s DNA.

Republicans have proven far more capable than Democrats at both recognizing and capitalizing on this fact, taking great pains to pass themselves off as the party favoring less government while their opponents are for more government.

The GOP has successfully created a perception.

Then there is reality. The truth is that both major parties want big government. Both have worked persistently to expand government’s size and reach.

The truth is that the biggest expansion of the federal government in the last half-century was the doing of a Republican administration with near-universal support of Republicans in Congress. That would be the creation of a vast new federal bureaucracy devoted to domestic surveillance and a radically enlarged police presence.

Today’s Republican Party also favors a very activist and intrusive government with respect to our personal lives, morality and sexuality. Republicans talk a good game about trusting in individuals to make their own life choices and in families to serve as the moral backbone of our society. But there is a big gap between word and deed. Modern-day Republicans have repeatedly supported interventions that effectively put government everywhere from the bedroom to the doctor’s office. They have repeatedly sought to dictate who can love and marry whom, and have not hesitated to meddle in doctor-patient relationships and medical decision making.

Democrats are known as the architects of the welfare state. Republicans are devoted to the public dole, too. In fact, the kind of welfare Republicans favor dwarfs the Democrats’ welfare programs. The truth is both parties like to fill the public trough. They just have very different ideas about who should be allowed to feed from it. The debate we should be having is how to create an economy where both kinds of welfare are unnecessary and can be eliminated. Neither major party has shown much interest in that conversation.

Blue Jean Nation believes government is necessary to a civil and just society and prosperous economy. But we insist on a limited government – one that is as small as possible and only as big as required to do what society needs done collectively. Government programs that work should be supported and ones that do not should be reformed or ended. Most importantly, what government does must serve the broad public interest and promote the common good, not just benefit those who lavishly fund election campaigns or have high-priced lobbyists advocating on their behalf.

So much time and energy is wasted fruitlessly arguing over which party wants more government and which one wants less, when the plain evidence shows that both are equally skilled at making government bigger. If we spent half as much time zeroing in on government’s purpose – what it does and for whom – as we spend assigning blame for its size, then we would really get somewhere.

Both major parties have proven they are for big government. And both have shown a distressing tendency to put government to work for a privileged few at the expense of the many. That’s what needs to change. We need a repurposed government, one that is serving the whole of society both consistently and well.

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Wisconsin Idea is Still under Attack

Posted by Citizen Action of Wisconsin, Robert Kraig
Citizen Action of Wisconsin, Robert Kraig
Robert Kraig is Executive Director, Citizen Action of Wisconsin, 221 S. 2nd St.,
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on Friday, 24 April 2015
in Wisconsin

scott-walker-clapsMADISON - Gov. Scott Walker’s attack on the Wisconsin Idea did not end with his botched attempt to re-write the University of Wisconsin’s mission statement. The substance of the attack is ongoing in his state budget.

The Wisconsin Idea is as simple as it is compelling. The fundamental rationale for our public universities is the on-going “search for truth” which elevates the lives of students to higher purposes than mere money getting and extends “knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of the campus” in order to “improve the human condition.”

The Wisconsin Idea as it developed over 100 years was not mere lofty language. The words were matched by financial commitments decade after decade which, built our public education system brick by brick. Now Walker, with his slashing education cuts, is undercutting these investments

This commitment to learning as a gateway to social progress, and the fundamental belief that it is within our power to bridge the gap between the world as it is and the world as it can be, motivated generations of Wisconsinites much poorer than ourselves. Year after year farmers and shopkeepers and industrial workers put their nickels and dimes together to invest heavily in building our world class university system, our highly rated public schools, and our renowned technical colleges.

The idea that we don’t have the money is absurd. We are a far richer state than we were 100 years ago and even 50 years ago. Walker wants us to think we live in an age of limits, but they are self imposed. In Walker’s narrow ideology giving large tax giveaways to large corporations with no strings attached and turning down millions of dollars of federal health care money are more important than continuing our generational commitment to education.

This attack on the Wisconsin Idea goes beyond funding. Walker’s scheme to spin off our universities, stripping public accountability from a system the people of Wisconsin built together, cuts the UW system off from its public charge. At its core, the Wisconsin Idea is about connecting our universities to the public and its needs, applying cutting-edge knowledge to our social and economic problems to advance opportunity and better society.

Walker’s brand of conservatism is not interested in such knowledge. In Walker’s doublespeak, forcing people off health coverage is innovation, wind farms are a greater threat to human health than fossil fuels, slashing money for education is reform, the failed voucher school experiment is a success, dismal job creation numbers are a comeback, $7.25 an hour is a “living wage,” gutting unions will raises wages, and a budget deficit is a surplus. No wonder Walker wants to scuttle Wisconsin’s century-old “search for truth” and the application of knowledge “beyond the campus.”

The visionaries who framed the Wisconsin Idea, and the generations of average people who made it a reality, had great dreams for our future, and acted on those dreams. We should continue to follow in their footsteps.

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Republicans Reject Oversight of Gov. Walker’s Campaign Travel

Posted by Jennifer Shilling, State Senator 32nd District
Jennifer Shilling, State Senator 32nd District
Jennifer Shilling serves as the Senate Democratic Leader and represents the 32nd
User is currently offline
on Wednesday, 22 April 2015
in Wisconsin

scottwalkerMove comes less than a week after limiting travel reimbursement for veterans.


MADISON – A Democratic proposal to provide greater oversight and transparency of the state taxpayer costs associated with Gov. Walker’s national campaigning was rejected by Republicans on the Legislature’s budget-writing Joint Finance Committee along a party-line vote today. The proposal would have required quarterly reporting of taxpayer costs associated with Gov. Walker’s out-of-state travel.

The decision by Republicans to block this proposal and continue subsidizing the Governor’s campaign junkets comes less than a week after imposing a travel reimbursement limit for military veterans.

For Republicans to limit the travel of distinguished veterans and then turn around and give Gov. Walker a blank check to campaign on the state taxpayers’ dime highlights the grossly misplaced priorities in this budget. If Republicans have the money to continue subsidizing Gov. Walker’s international campaign junkets, then they should find a way to help military honor guards, disabled veterans and distinguished medal recipients attend state-sponsored events.

As Gov. Walker increasingly leaves the state in pursuit of his presidential ambitions, costs for his travel have increased drastically. His six day trip to Great Britain cost taxpayers over $138,000 or roughly $23,000 per day.

While Gov. Walker continues to jet around the country, families here in Wisconsin are left paying for his bills. With a $2.2 billion budget deficit, a lagging economy and a shrinking middle-class, it’s time for Republicans to re-evaluate their priorities. I hope that we can improve this budget and adopt the cost-effective, pro-growth initiatives being put forward by Democrats to strengthen our economy and lift up Wisconsin families.

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