Your hardworking correspondents Brian and I got up bright and early this morning to attend a candidate forum at the AMU sponsored by Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee.
In honor of Senator Taylor’s announcement at the forum that she supports increasing the sales tax, I thought today’s Lenalegislation would be Healthy Wisconsin, which is another of her favored tax hikes.
The Wisconsin State Budget is currently just under $30 billion annually. The Healthy Wisconsin program would add $15 billion and change to the State Budget – effectively a 50% increase in the size of State Government.
How to pay for it? A new payroll tax of 10.5 percent from all employers and 4 percent from all employees. It would be by far and away the biggest tax increase in state history.
And that $15.2 billion estimate is from the State Senate Democrats who support the plan. But as Prof. Rick Esenberg has recently pointed out, the plan would make Wisconsin a destination state for sick and older folks, which would explode the cost of the program. Moreover, as research by the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance has shown, that number will double in ten years at current rates of medical inflation.
That’s right – the Healthy Wisconsin plan could be just as big as all the rest of the State Government ten years from now. All paid for by your tax dollars. Thanks, Senator Taylor!
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Taylors “Healthy Wisconsin” plan also gives, to a panel of unelected bureaucrats, the ability to raise the payroll tax without legislative approval.