Sen. Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) speaks at a press conference Wednesday morning about the Senate Democrats' "Affordable Wisconsin Agenda." (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

If there’s one word at the top of Democratic Party political discourse this year, it’s “affordability.”

Whether focused on a particular issue — child care, health care and housing are the most frequent examples — or on the cost of just about everything, making goods and services and life “affordable” figures high in the opening pitches of candidates across the state.

“I think the No. 1  issue that we need to focus on is affordability,” said Mitchell Berman, a Racine County nurse, when he announced in August he would seek the  Democratic nomination to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District.

Trevor Jung in Racine launched his state Senate campaign in September with a focus on “affordability” and “good-paying jobs.” Corrine Hendrickson, a former child care proprietor in New Glarus, said “affordability” is the top issue for her state Senate bid — and she wasn’t just talking about child care.

Democrats campaigning to be the party’s nominee for governor as diverse as David Crowley, Missy Hughes, and Francesca Hong have all uttered the word in introducing themselves to the public.

On Wednesday, the State Senate Democratic Committee had a press conference outside the Capitol to announce the Democrats’ focus on affordability, both for their upcoming legislative agenda and with an eye on the 2026 elections.

“Right now in Wisconsin, 65% of families are saying they are just getting by or they are struggling,” said Sen. Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton), the Senate minority leader. A spokesperson said the July Marquette University Law School poll was the source for the survey finding.

State Senate Democrats plan to spend the next few weeks traveling Wisconsin and hearing from state residents. Hesselbein said those conversations will become fodder for “tangible policy solutions that will help working families keep more of their hard-earned money, and we’re calling it the Affordable Wisconsin Agenda.”

Nathan Kalmoe, a University of Wisconsin political scientist, said via email that emphasizing poor economic conditions could be risky for Wisconsin Democrats running in state elections. While Republican lawmakers “may take some blame, the governor is a Democrat,” and voters tend to hold the chief executive responsible for economic conditions, he said. 

Kalmoe added that focusing on the economy exclusively at the expense of concerns for the most marginalized or concerns about Trump administration actions that threaten democracy would be “disturbing, and dangerous.”

Nevertheless, polling trends in the last several months suggest why Democrats nationwide have been focusing on inflation and the economy, said John D. Johnson, a research fellow and political analyst at Marquette University.

In Marquette polls shortly after President Donald Trump was elected to a second term in November, and again before he took office in January, 41% of adults nationally said they believed his policies would reduce inflation.

In Marquette’s most recent national poll, conducted in mid-September and released Oct. 2, “that had fallen to 25%,” Johnson said in an email to the Wisconsin Examiner. “Meanwhile, the share believing Trump’s policies would increase inflation grew from 45% to 60%.”

In the September poll, 40% of adults named “inflation and the cost of living” as the top issue in the U.S. “Another 19% chose ‘the economy’ more generally,” Johnson said.

“Overall, 29% of adults approved of Trump’s handling of ‘inflation and the cost of living’ while 71% disapproved,” Johnson said. (On “border security,” meanwhile, 55% of those polled approved Trump while 45% disapproved.)

In May, 68% of Republicans and 23% of independent voters told the Marquette pollsters they approved of how Trump was handling “inflation and the cost of living.” By September, Republican support had slipped to 57%, but among independents, support had plummeted to 14%.

“In other words, this is (1) an issue where there is a lot of daylight between how Republicans and Independents rate Trump, and (2) an issue where Trump is falling with both Democrats and Independents,” Johnson said.

At the Senate Democrats’ news conference Wednesday, a succession of senators — along with one state representative who is a Senate hopeful — spoke of how the issue of affordability cuts across a wide range of topics. And each laid blame for inaction on their Republican rivals.

“Senate Democrats have already been leading the fight to lower the cost of housing, whether trying to expand the homestead tax credit or preventing hedge funds from buying up available housing stocks, but undoubtedly more needs to be done,” said Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick).

Rep. Jenna Jacobson (D-Oregon), who has the endorsement of the Senate Democrats as she seeks the party’s nomination in the 17th Senate District next year, pointed to “reckless federal policies” hitting farmers and hiking grocery bills.

Democratic state lawmakers have proposed a free school meal bill along with grants for farmers who provide food to food pantries, replacing a federal program cut by the Trump administration, she said; both are “examples of some of the kinds of policies that we can advance to lower everyday costs.”

Sen. Kristin Dassler-Alfheim (D-Appleton) warned of coming spikes both in health insurance costs and in the rates of people without health insurance because of the expiring Affordable Care Act premium subsidies at the center of the federal shutdown fight in Congress. “We need Congress to get to work and renew these ACA subsidies,” she said.

Meanwhile, bills in the state Legislature to lower prescription drug costs and cap the price of asthma medication “haven’t even gotten a public hearing,” Dassler-Alfheim said. “We could be doing more here in Wisconsin to make life a little bit more affordable for everyone.”

Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) said Wisconsin continues to face “a child care crisis,” with too few options for working families. Care is increasingly costly, “not because child care providers are making huge profits,” she said. “It’s because we can no longer underpay those doing the child care work, mostly women.”

Democrats have been pushing for expanding child care support, “yet Republicans in Madison stand in the way every single time,” Keyeski said.

Hesselbein said that the Senate Democrats hope that they can follow up on their conversations with voters across the state by “bringing those ideas back to the state Legislature, working on them and hopefully being able to pass them in a bipartisan manner.”

At the same time, however, she blamed inaction on Republican lawmakers who “are mired in internal conflict, unwilling to cross the aisle and get stuff done for Wisconsinites.” The  2026 election will enable voters to “turn the page,” she said, “and vote for a vision that puts Wisconsinites first, that puts you and your families first.”

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The offices of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, in Madison. The department administers the state unemployment insurance program. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

A change to unemployment compensation that would penalize people who receive federal disability payments has made it into a draft bill to revise Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance law — despite vocal opposition from Democrats in the state Legislature.

For people who receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) income, the change would sharply reduce their jobless pay if they lose work. For many, it could wipe out their unemployment compensation entirely, according to Victor Forberger, a veteran unemployment insurance lawyer.

The SSDI provision is part of the agreed-upon draft legislation that was approved Wednesday by the Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council.

The council includes an equal number of management and labor representatives and was established in 1932 to give labor and management an equal voice in shaping the state’s unemployment insurance (UI) program. The council’s members negotiate and draft changes to the state’s UI laws every two years.

On Wednesday Forberger called the council’s 2025 draft bill “a terrible deal for workers.”

Less than a week ago, the Department of Workforce Development (DWD) walked back an earlier proposal to penalize SSDI recipients who apply for jobless pay. The return of a similar provision in the draft bill caught critics by surprise.

“I was pretty shocked when I heard about it this morning,” said state Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee), a vocal critic of the earlier proposal. “I thought it was put to rest.”

The SSDI unemployment pay ban

Since 2013, under a law enacted in then-Gov. Scott Walker’s first term, people who receive SSDI income are automatically disqualified from collecting unemployment insurance — despite the fact that many SSDI recipients hold part-time jobs and would otherwise qualify for jobless pay if they get laid off.

In July 2024 a federal judge ruled that 2013 law violated two federal laws: the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act. The ruling came in a lawsuit that a team of lawyers including Forberger filed on behalf of SSDI recipients who were denied unemployment compensation when they were thrown out of work.

This summer, the judge, William Conley, ordered DWD to stop disqualifying unemployment compensation applications simply because an applicant also receives SSDI.

In August, Conley ordered the department to reconsider the applications of people denied UI because of the ban since 2015 and to award them the jobless pay they would have qualified for without the ban. Conley also ordered DWD to repay applicants who had originally received jobless pay, then had it clawed back after the department belatedly found that they were also SSDI recipients.

Also in August, the joint labor-management advisory committee reviewed a dozen proposed changes in state unemployment insurance law requested by DWD.

One of those proposals was to repeal the 2013 state ban on unemployment pay for people on SSDI. The memo noted the court’s ruling invalidating the ban.

But that proposal also called for offsetting an SSDI recipient’s weekly unemployment pay by the weekly value of the SSDI income. The memo acknowledged that the proposal would probably eliminate unemployment compensation for most SSDI recipients who applied.

“In 2024, the average SSDI payment in Wisconsin was $1,500 per month,” the DWD proposal memo stated. “The average weekly SSDI payment for UI purposes is calculated at $346.20 per week. This weekly amount will in many cases fully reduce the UI benefit a SSDI recipient can receive.”

The memo concluded, “In summary, most SSDI claimants will not be able to receive UI benefits. While some may be able to receive UI benefits, it is expected that the weekly UI payment would be small.”

Offset proposal walked back — then returns

The proposal sparked backlash from Forberger and Democratic lawmakers. On Sept. 18, DWD submitted an amended version of the proposal to the advisory council.

The revision removed the offset provision entirely and called for simply repealing the ban on jobless pay for SSDI recipients.

The department noted in its amendment memo that the process of paying past unemployment insurance applicants under the court order had begun, and that those payments were being made without a deduction for SSDI income.

“The Department is amending its proposal to repeal the SSDI disqualification provision and remove the offset provision,” the Sept. 18 memo stated. “This will align with the effect of the court’s order that is now allowing claimants who receive SSDI to be eligible for the full amount of their weekly benefit without a reduction for any SSDI received.”

At the Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council’s meeting on Wednesday morning, the body approved a draft bill for updates to Wisconsin’s UI law on a unanimous vote.

The draft includes a repeal of the SSDI unemployment compensation ban. Despite DWD’s Sept. 18 memo, however, the draft includes language that claws back some of an SSDI recipient’s jobless pay.

“If a monthly social security disability insurance payment is issued to a claimant, the department shall reduce benefits otherwise payable to the claimant for a given week by one-half of the amount [of a] security disability insurance payment that is allocated for that week,” the draft bill states.

While the offset in the draft bill is half what the original DWD proposal called for, Forberger said Wednesday that even the 50% offset would likely mean no unemployment pay for many SSDI recipients.

Sinicki and state Sen. Kristin Dassler-Alfheim (D-Appleton) introduced a bill of their own earlier this month to repeal the ban.

“Receiving SSDI should not prevent working Wisconsinites from receiving unemployment insurance if they’re laid off,” Dassler-Alfheim told the Wisconsin Examiner on Wednesday. “That’s why Rep. Sinicki and I have proposed legislation to remove that ban from state statute, and I’m really hoping that we can see it across the finish line and put this problem to rest once and for all.”

The draft bill is the product of provisions worked out by each caucus — management and labor — in separate closed sessions. The Wisconsin Examiner contacted two senior representatives in the labor caucus of the council for comment Wednesday on the process, but received no response.

“I’m looking forward to finding out how this language got in there,” Sinicki told the Wisconsin Examiner Wednesday afternoon.

“If that language is in there, it is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and you know the courts have already said that. I’ve already said that,” Sinicki said. “And now they’re just going to end up right back in court with this. It makes no sense to me.”

Sinicki has long championed the advisory councils for unemployment insurance as well as for workers comp for negotiating legislation that represents the interests of both labor and management. She’s often chided Republican lawmakers who have authored and passed bills affecting either of those systems without going through the councils.

This time, “I’m struggling with it — I’ll be honest — because it is the agreed-upon bill,” Sinicki said of the unemployment insurance draft. “But first of all, as a Democrat and as somebody who prides herself in the fact that we take care of our most needy, I can’t vote for this.”

Sinicki said the legislation after it’s introduced is subject to being amended like any other bill, and that she would expect an amendment removing the offset proposal.

By tradition, the bill that comes from the advisory council is introduced under the names of the committee chair and the minority party ranking member on the Assembly’s labor committee — which is Sinicki.

Unless the draft is changed, however, “I will not be putting my name on this bill,” she said.

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Unemployment benefits application (photo by Getty Images)

The state labor department has backed away from its controversial proposal to change state unemployment insurance law that critics say would have perpetuated discrimination against people with disabilities.

A newly amended proposal from the state Department of Workforce Development (DWD) calls for repealing Wisconsin’s ban on jobless pay for people who receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) income.

The proposal follows a federal court ruling that found the ban violates two federal laws protecting people with disabilities.

Until this week, however, DWD’s proposal to repeal the ban included an additional provision: While a person receiving SSDI payments would be eligible for unemployment insurance after losing a job, disability income would “offset” — cancel out — some or all of the individual’s unemployment compensation.

The SSDI proposal was one of a dozen changes to the state’s unemployment insurance law that DWD submitted to the joint labor-management Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council earlier this year. The council, a long-standing body with equal representation from business and labor, negotiates changes to the state’s unemployment insurance laws every two years.

On Thursday, DWD submitted an amended version of its SSDI proposal. The new version repeals the ban on jobless pay for SSDI recipients and omits the offset provision.

“This is wonderful news for everyone involved and for the state of Wisconsin in general, disabled or non-disabled,” said lawyer Victor Forberger.

Forberger has specialized in representing people whose unemployment insurance claims have been rejected. He was one of the lawyers who sued DWD in federal court in 2021 to overturn the state law banning jobless pay for SSDI recipients.

Jobless pay ban violates federal law

U.S. District Judge William Conley ruled in July 2024 that the jobless pay ban violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.

Even after that ruling, DWD continued to deny unemployment claims made by people on SSDI. This July 14, Conley ordered DWD to stop disqualifying SSDI recipients from unemployment compensation.

In August, the judge ordered DWD to pay jobless benefits to eligible applicants who were denied because they received SSDI payments between Sept. 7, 2015 — when the SSDI-unemployment ban law was last revised — and July 30, 2025. Conley also ordered DWD to pay back people who had collected jobless pay but then ordered to pay back the money because they were on SSDI.

The federal Social Security Administration program allows and encourages disability insurance recipients to work part-time if they are able to.

During the administration of Gov. Scott Walker, however, DWD asserted in a  proposal that disability payment recipients who applied for unemployment insurance were probably “double-dipping” and committing “fraud.” The ban on unemployment pay for SSDI recipients was enacted in 2013, during Walker’s first term, and revised in 2015 during his second term.

DWD proposes unemployment insurance changes

Earlier this year DWD drafted 12 proposed revisions to Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance law for the joint labor-management Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council to consider.

The department’s SSDI proposal called for repealing the ban on jobless pay, but also called for offsetting an SSDI recipient’s unemployment compensation on the basis of the disability income.

When Forberger read the DWD proposal and saw the offset provision, he wrote about it on his blog about unemployment insurance policy and wrote to the labor caucus members of the advisory council urging them not to support it.

The offset provision was still part of DWD’s SSDI repeal recommendation when the department presented its proposals to the advisory council in August.

The offset provision surprised state Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) when it came to her attention. Sinicki has often scolded lawmakers when they introduce bills to change the unemployment compensation system without sending them through the joint labor-management council.

“I’ve always been a stickler for, you vote yes on the agreed-upon bill [from the advisory council] because it was a compromise between both parties,” Sinicki told the Wisconsin Examiner on Thursday. But when she learned of the offset provision, “I made it very clear that I would not vote for any bill that had that in there.”

Sinicki along with Sen. Kristin Dassler-Alfheim (D-Appleton) have authored their own proposal to repeal the SSDI jobless pay ban after the court ordered DWD to stop enforcing it. Both said they opposed DWD’s offset proposal and that they were glad to see that the department scrapped it Thursday.

‘Discrimination. Full stop.’

“What’s happening right now is discrimination. Full stop,” Dassler-Alfheim said in a written statement to the Wisconsin Examiner. “That’s why the federal judge ruled against it, that’s why Representative Sinicki and I have proposed legislation to remove it from state statute, and I’m glad to see that DWD has put forth this amendment” removing the offset.

Three proposed budgets from Gov. Tony Evers included recommendations to end the SSDI jobless pay ban, but with an offset provision as well. Those largely went unnoticed at the time, and were removed along with hundreds of other Evers proposals by the Republican leaders of the Joint Finance Committee during budget deliberations.

It wasn’t clear Thursday what prompted DWD to remove the offset provision from its latest proposal. The department memo to the joint advisory council said that it was already complying with Conley’s order to process benefit claims for SSDI recipients and would do so for previously-denied claims without an offset.

Amending its proposed change in the law to remove the offset provision “will align with the effect of the court’s order that is now allowing claimants who receive SSDI to be eligible for the full amount of their weekly benefit without a reduction for any SSDI received,” the memo states.

Sinicki said that while she was outspoken about her opposition to the offset provision, she had not directly communicated that either to DWD or to members of the advisory council.

A spokesperson for Dassler-Alfheim said she also had not been in direct contact with DWD or the Evers administration about her opposition to the offset.

 

A draft bill Democrats are circulating would repeal Wisconsin's ban on unemployment insurance for people who receive Social Security Disability Insurance payments. (Getty Images)

After a federal court decision rolled back a Wisconsin law that blocked disability payment recipients from collecting unemployment insurance, Democratic lawmakers have drafted legislation that repeals that law.

“Our job is to correct mistakes or ensure that someone’s rights aren’t taken from them. And when this statute originally passed, I think that’s exactly what it did,” said Sen. Kristin Dassler-Alfheim (D-Appleton) in a phone interview Tuesday after circulating the draft legislation earlier in the day.

“The good news is the court has come down and we now have the proper stance. Now, it’s our job to ensure that those rights aren’t infringed on again,” she said.

Dassler-Alfheim’s draft bill is co-authored by state Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee). It codifies a ruling in July by U.S. District Judge William Conley that ordered the Department of Workforce Development (DWD) to stop denying unemployment insurance applications from people who collect Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI).

Conley ruled a year ago that the 2013 Wisconsin law disqualifying Social Security Disability Insurance recipients from collecting unemployment insurance violated two federal laws: The Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act. The ruling came in response to a class-action lawsuit filed in 2021 opposing the state’s ban on jobless pay for people on SSDI.

Conley delayed imposing a remedy in his July 17, 2024, decision. While DWD never indicated plans to appeal the ruling, the department continued to enforce the 2013 law, blocking jobless pay for people on SSDI.

A year after his first decision, Conley ordered DWD to stop enforcing the law, and on Aug. 20, issued a follow-up order on behalf of two groups of people in the original lawsuit.

DWD must pay jobless benefits to applicants between Sept. 7, 2015 — when the SSDI-unemployment ban law was last revised — and July 30, 2025, who were denied because they received SSDI payments. Those applicants must demonstrate that they were eligible for unemployment insurance except for the SSDI ban, Conley wrote.

DWD must also pay back people who had originally been awarded jobless pay but were then required to return the money because they were on SSDI, the judge ordered.

Conley ruled that applicants are not eligible for state jobless pay for weeks in which they received Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program that was created at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A first-term lawmaker, Dassler-Alfheim said her career in the insurance and financial industry attuned her to the issue that the SSDI ban on jobless pay raised.

“Being keenly aware when people have limitations on income is just something that I’ve always paid attention to,” Dassler-Alfheim said. “Anytime you’ve got restrictions on people . . . when they’re trying to work and something goes wrong, to not be able to give them the compensation — it’s just not right.”

The federal Social Security Administration program allows disability insurance recipients to work part-time if they are able to, and encourages them to do so under programs that ensure they do not lose their disability payments or their medical coverage under Medicaid.

When Wisconsin banned SSDI recipients from unemployment pay, however, DWD under the administration of former Gov. Scott Walker discounted the possibility that people enrolled in the federal disability program might be able to work. A DWD proposal at the time asserted that disability payment recipients who applied for unemployment insurance were probably “double-dipping” and committing “fraud.”

The law was originally enacted in 2013, then amended in 2015, also during the Walker administration. 

The law “really was discrimination,” Dassler-Alfheim said Tuesday. “There’s no reason that that should have taken place.”

DWD proposal could blunt ruling’s impact

Waiting in the wings, however, is a proposal from the current DWD staff that critics say would undo the impact of Conley’s decision.

The proposal is part of the package that the department has submitted to the state Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council — a joint labor-management body that for decades has negotiated and recommended changes to the state’s jobless pay law. DWD presented its proposals — 12 in all — to the council in August.

The department’s proposal on unemployment pay for SSDI recipients calls for offsetting an applicant’s jobless pay by the applicant’s SSDI payment, “to prevent the payment of duplicative government benefits for the replacement of lost earnings or income, regardless of an individual’s ability to work.” 

The recipient’s monthly SSDI payment would be divided into fractions allocated for each week of jobless pay, and the equivalent amount of that payment would be subtracted from the recipient’s weekly unemployment check.

For many SSDI recipients that would wipe out their jobless pay entirely, according to unemployment insurance lawyer Victor Forberger. 

For example, a person who gets $1,000 from SSDI each month and is awarded unemployment pay would have $250 deducted each week from their unemployment benefits. 

“Very few SSDI recipients have a weekly unemployment insurance benefit of more than $250,” Forberger said in an interview in July — meaning that they would probably not collect any jobless pay at all despite qualifying for it. 

In a statement Tuesday, DWD defended the proposal.

The administration of Gov. Tony Evers has three times proposed budgets that would end the ban on UI for SSDI recipients on the grounds that “denying unemployment insurance (UI) benefits to social security disability insurance (SSDI) recipients was discriminatory,” DWD’s statement said.

Those same proposals included offset provisions. DWD said that those proposals “mirrored the treatment [of] SSDI with the treatment of pensions and lump sum payments under UI law.” Those payments can similarly reduce an unemployment insurance award. 

Lawmakers on the state Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee threw all those changes out of the budget each time, however. 

Conley’s July 2024 opinion found barring jobless pay for SSDI recipients violated federal law, the DWD statement said. But, the department statement added, his ruling also “noted that offsets to the receipt of SSDI have been upheld by other courts.” 

Conley’s most recent orders blocked DWD from enforcing the SSDI unemployment insurance ban, “but did not order an offset,” said the DWD statement, calling the judge’s order “consistent with DWD’s policy position.”

“DWD has already begun processing payments for individuals who receive SSDI,” the statement said. “DWD will continue [to] meet the requirements of the court’s order and any legislation that is signed into law.”

Forberger said reducing jobless pay by the amount of a recipient’s SSDI payment would effectively nullify the court’s ruling, however. “It would perpetuate the discrimination,” he said. 

SSDI benefits are “a bare minimum and in some cases not even that,” Forberger said. People enrolled in SSDI and who also take jobs “need to do this work to support themselves.”

Dassler-Alfheim told the Wisconsin Examiner that she would oppose including the offset proposal in a UI revision bill. 

“If they lose that job that they have gone out of their way to get, even though they’re disabled, they certainly deserve to be compensated for their unemployment at the same rate, under the same scruples, as anybody else,” Dassler-Alfheim said.

“These are people that are doing exactly what society wants them to do — not sitting home on a disability check,” she added. “Why would we disincentivize by removing benefits if they were to lose their job for something they didn’t do?”

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