When big changes land in Washington and Madison, the ground can shake across the rest of Wisconsin. In those moments, the Forum helps the residents of our state to understand where they stand. We’ve played that role for more than a century for businesses, local governments, school districts, and ordinary citizens, and it’s as critical today as it has ever been.
At the federal level, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and executive actions by President Donald Trump’s administration have combined to make broad changes to federal taxes, spending, workforce, and other policies in the state. Though some of the actions are still subject to litigation and may not survive court challenges, other changes have already taken effect or are about to do so.
Our June brief looked at the state’s exposure to cuts in areas such as Medicaid, FoodShare benefits (formerly food stamps), university research, and federal contracting and payroll. In the coming months, we will look at the potential impacts to federal housing and homelessness programs in the Milwaukee area with support from the Community Development Alliance.
Gov. Tony Evers and lawmakers made changes of their own in July as part of the 2025-27 state budget – an “all of the above” plan that is projected to draw down billions in reserves to make both sizable spending increases and tax cuts. We noted in our July summary that this budget is expected to leave Wisconsin with a mismatch between revenues and spending that could prove difficult to balance two years from now.
In the state budget, Evers and lawmakers raced to raise the state hospital tax, drawing down additional federal funds for Medicaid health coverage for low-income residents and increasing payments to hospitals before the Big Beautiful Bill blocked them from doing so. Their action substantially changed the calculus for whether it makes sense for Wisconsin to expand Medicaid under the terms of the federal Affordable Care Act – a question that the Forum examined last year and may now have to revisit.
The next step in assessing the impact of these federal and state changes for Wisconsin comes with our analysis in October of the budgets for Milwaukee County and the cities of Madison and Milwaukee. Here again, we will try to look past the controversy and partisan rancor to gauge the impact of these changes on taxpayers and key services such as public safety, infrastructure, transit, and the social safety net.
In public life, sometimes little comes from the policies that are most loudly denounced and enthusiastically greeted, while other more opaque measures do great good or damage while drawing little notice. Over the next year, the Forum will be doing its part by delving into the changes coming out of the statehouse and D.C. to try to discern which is which.