WAUKESHA, Wis. — Governor Tony Evers signed Assembly Bill 1023 on Monday to expand the child and dependent tax care credit. One main reason why the bipartisan bill was signed was because Governor Evers said the cost of child care is too high.
“According to the report from the Century Foundation… without continued investments in childcare programs in Wisconsin, 2,110 childcare programs are projected to close… resulting in over 87,000 children without childcare, and the loss of 4,880 childcare jobs,” Governor Evers said. “Additionally, the lack of access of childcare can potentially cause about half a billion dollars in economic impacts across the state.”
He said he’s willing to work with anybody, whether they be Republicans or Democrats, to find childcare solutions beyond this bill.
“I want to be really, really clear… we must work together to find a long-term solution to the state’s looming childcare cost crisis,” he said. “Including supporting providers and investing in child care costs.”
Wisconsin Department of Revenue Secretary Peter Barca said the impact of this bill will ripple to people across Wisconsin communities.
“It’s a benefit for small businesses and [the] workforce. It’s a benefit for families, children… and it’s a benefit for daycare providers whose parents can better afford to put their kids in daycare,” he said.
One of the statistics that Secretary Barca said stood out to him was the Department of Revenue’s finding that the cost of sending an infant to childcare costs almost $3,000 more than sending a teenager to one of UW’s undergraduate programs.
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers signing Assembly Bill 1023 to help lower the costs of childcare across Wisconsin.
— Julien Johnson (@jujuelz_is) March 4, 2024
Sending an infant to daycares in Wisconsin costs almost $3,000 more than to send a teenager to UW-Schools according to the Department of Revenue @620wtmj pic.twitter.com/WSuyCGXLew
Although Governor Evers passed this bill, he vetoed three different Republican-led tax-cut bills last week. He claimed that there were two main reasons why he decided to veto these bills:
“It would have put us in a position where we couldn’t [work on] childcare, and frankly, it could have cost us the entire surplus that we have in a matter of months… and that is unacceptable,” he said.
He said the other reason dealt with how they’d have to give federal money back if the tax cuts were approved.
“Because during the pandemic the federal government made it clear that taking in money from the federal government and using it to lower taxes was not acceptable,” he said.
He said he’s open to any type of solutions moving forward for potential tax cuts.
“We can’t decide we’re going to get rid of the surplus overnight and then say, ‘Oh we have to do something about public schools, or we need to do something about early childhood,'” he said. “I’ll give people a chance to rest and think about what we want to do moving forward.”
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