The Walker budget, as it unfolds, will create a Wisconsin unrecognizable to most of its citizens.

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Republican legislators, anxious about the recalls, are now claiming that Wisconsin’s unusually powerful recall provision is a barrier to conducting the state’s urgent business (like granting quick approval for a major mine project with alarming environmental hazards) and should be weakened. In the short run, with big majorities in both houses, the Republicans were in a position to ram through the budget despite fierce Democratic opposition, the warnings of impending disaster from local public officials of both parties, and public resistance shown by a new round of mass demonstrations and the construction of a “Walkerville” encampment designed to remind the public of the Depression-era Hoovervilles. The Walker budget, as it unfolds, will create a Wisconsin unrecognizable to most of its citizens.

Corporate Tax Paradise

Over 60% of Wisconsin corporations with revenues over $100 million pay no state income taxes. If Wisconsin firms were taxed at the national average, the state would gain $1.1 billion annually in revenue. In April, the respected accounting firm of Ernst & Young calculated that Wisconsin is the 4th least expensive state in which to start a new business.

However, Walker is promoting a larger transfer of wealth to larger corporations, their CEOs, and large investors. The budget contains at least $260 million in new corporate tax cuts at the same time that he is draining funds from public education. That figure will grow substantially, as some of the cuts have modest impact in the near future but will grow quite a bit in the coming years. The income tax for manufacturers and agriculture corporations will be almost entirely phased out over the next six years, dropping from A phase-out of almost the entire corporate income tax for manufacturers and agricultural corporations — by 2017 the corporate tax rate on these kinds of firms would have dropped from 7.9% to 0.4% (tax data courtesy of Jack Norman, research director, Institute for Wisconsin’s Future.)

Wisconsin’s tax code covering multi-state corporations will be weakened, enhancing their ability to shield profits from Wisconsin taxes. The gorging of corporations and investors’ hunger for tax cuts and subsidies — despite record profits and a record 24% of income flowing to just the richest 1% — comes at the expense of public schools and other services long valued by a bipartisan majority in Wisconsin.http://www.populist.com/11.13.bybee.html