U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany said at an event Tuesday in Madison that if elected governor he’d return the state’s current budget surplus to taxpayers while also cutting property taxes, eliminating taxes on tips and overtime and overturning Gov. Tony Evers’ 400-year school funding increase while also increasing the rate at which public schools are reimbursed for special education services. 

Tiffany said he’d do all of that even though he has not “penciled out in detail” how he’d pay for it all. At the event Tuesday hosted at the Madison Club by WisPolitics.com, Tiffany repeatedly lamented “Madison math” that makes people ask what will be cut from the state budget if lawmakers cut taxes, reducing state revenue. 

Several times during the moderated interview and to reporters after the event, Tiffany compared the state budget process to household budgeting. 

“Families figure out what their priorities are, and then they spend accordingly,” he said. “Education is going to be one of my priorities. Transportation will be a priority. Healthcare is going to be a priority. Those things take first call on the budget, and then when we get down to the wants, if some of them fall off, so be it. We’re going to make sure that we take care of the basics first.”

Tiffany is running for governor during a midterm election cycle in which Democrats are planning for the possibility that they can hold trifecta control of Wisconsin’s government for the first time in more than 15 years. President Donald Trump’s declining approval rating, the national political landscape and new voting maps that could end years of Republican legislative control mean that Tiffany is campaigning against the political current. 

Repeating a line from his speech at the Republican Party of Wisconsin convention earlier this month, Tiffany said he was running for governor rather than continuing to hold his safe Republican seat in Congress because he wants to reverse what he sees as a “state in decline.” 

Loyalty

Tiffany, who was first elected to the Legislature in 2010 and then elected to represent northern Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District in 2020, said “people who know” him know that he’s always been loyal first to the people of Wisconsin rather than the Republican executives — former Gov. Scott Walker and Trump — he’s worked with. 

Tiffany is a member of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus and has rarely broken from Trump while in Congress. Following the 2020 presidential election, Tiffany joined Republican efforts to overturn Trump’s loss. Last week, he told reporters he still had concerns about “improprieties” in the administration of the 2020 election. 

On Tuesday, Tiffany wouldn’t say that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, only that Biden was the president from 2021 until 2025. He said that he had concerns about the administration of the election in “a number of states.” 

“We should make sure that those things that were done wrong did not unduly damage that election,” he said. “On January 6 of 2021 it was decided by the Congress that Joe Biden won the presidency, and he became president … and I accepted that. I referred to him as President Biden, and, but I gotta tell you, it was a bad time for the United States of America when you had 10 million people that came in illegally, when we lost our energy independence, when we tucked tail and ran in Afghanistan … it was not a good period of time, but he was president for those four years.” 

Tiffany said he was still “studying the details” of the U.S. Department of Justice’s $1.776 billion slush fund for compensating people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. But he said he didn’t think people who assaulted law enforcement officers should receive any of that money. 

Asked to point to other examples in which he disagrees with Trump, he said he didn’t believe the federal government should allow more Chinese students to attend American public universities such as the University of Wisconsin. 

During the audience question portion of the event, Tiffany was asked about the undocumented workers who make up a large portion of the state’s dairy workforce. Tiffany responded by criticizing Biden-era immigration policy, attacking “sanctuary” policies and claiming that the national decline in violent crime is because of Trump’s crackdown on immigration. 

But Tiffany wouldn’t say if Immigration and Customs Enforcement went too far during its occupation of the Democratic-run cities Chicago, Minnesota and Los Angeles. 

“The President made a decision that he thought that things should be done differently after what happened in Minneapolis, and I think that decision will be born out here as we go forward,” he said. “But remember, Minnesota was an anomaly, Immigration and Customs Enforcement works very closely with law enforcement. Here’s what I would do: I would make sure that local, county and state law enforcement works closely with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and coordinate their efforts to make sure what happened in Minnesota does not happen in Wisconsin.” 

Madison issues 

Tiffany also weighed in on a number of issues that lawmakers in Madison have taken up this year, including the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program, the legalization of online sports betting and the growth of hyperscale data centers in the state. 

On the stewardship program, which is set to expire at the end of June after legislators failed to reach a deal on extending it past 2026, Tiffany said he’d sign a bill to re-authorize the program if it focuses on maintaining “what we have” rather than acquiring new state land. Tiffany in recent years has often joined Republican state lawmakers in opposing land conservation projects in the northern part of the state through the program. 

Earlier this year, lawmakers enacted a law that would allow the state’s Native American tribes to begin operating online sports betting operations. The bill will require the state’s gambling compacts with the tribes to be re-negotiated. 

Tiffany said he doesn’t support expanding gambling opportunities in the state but that he’d “have to review the details” of the law to weigh in on the compact negotiations. 

Over the past year, the construction of massive AI data centers has become one of the most potent political issues in the state. Tiffany said that the controversial data centers in Port Washington, Mount Pleasant and Beaver Dam have taught the state lessons on how to move forward. He said he would repeal a provision included in the 2023-25 state budget that exempted data center construction costs from the state sales tax, prevent data centers from being built on “productive farmland,” work to keep utility rates stable and prevent the tech companies building the data centers from making local governments sign non-disclosure agreements. 

However he wouldn’t say if legislation would be required to achieve those goals, only saying that “my Public Service Commission” would handle it.

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Wisconsin Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) said Thursday she’s confident legislative Democrats’ opposition to the property tax and school funding deal that fell apart in the Legislature late Wednesday night won’t hurt her chances at Democrats winning majority control of both chambers for the first time in more than 15 years. 

The deal, which was negotiated by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), all of whom are not seeking re-election, was passed in the Assembly with some Democratic support but died in the Senate after three Republicans joined all 15 Democrats in voting against its passage. 

Under the deal, the state’s school district would have received a higher reimbursement rate for special education services, state aid to schools would have been increased in an effort to lower property taxes, individual taxpayers would have received a $300 tax rebate check and state taxes on tips and overtime would have been eliminated. 

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Democrats largely objected to the deal’s long-term financial effect, arguing it would have left the state with a massive structural deficit ahead of next year’s budget cycle. But since the deal’s announcement Monday morning, its potential effect on the state’s midterm election politics has been at the forefront. Legislative Democrats expressed frustration that Evers was handing a lifeline to the Assembly Republican caucus. Most, but not all, of the candidates in the Democratic primary for governor opposed the bill’s use of the state budget surplus — taking away the nearly $3 billion pile of money they were anticipating to have for their own legislative plans. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the presumptive GOP nominee for governor, opposed the deal and lobbied Republicans to vote against it. 

At an event hosted Thursday afternoon at the Madison Club by WisPolitics.com, Neubauer said that she believed passing the deal would have been irresponsible financially. 

“Our caucus, alongside our Democratic colleagues, and many people were concerned that the deal would have put us in a very difficult financial position,” she said, noting federal cuts by the Trump administration, the higher burden placed on states for covering the costs of Medicaid and the economic uncertainty facing the country because of the war in Iran. “We did not feel it was responsible to pass a proposal that would very likely put us in a deficit in the years ahead.” 

She added that the structure of the deal would not have been enough to stop the cycle of local school funding referendums that school districts across the state have had to rely on in recent years to cover costs in the face of reduced state money. With the midterm elections so close, and accusations that the Democrats only opposed the bill because it might help Republicans in November, she said that passing bad policy to help vulnerable Assembly Republicans such as Reps. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Todd Novak (R-Dodgeville) would have been irresponsible. 

She also said she believes voters understand that the problems facing the state are more attributable to 16 years of Republican legislative control than one vote. 

“Frankly I think their incumbents are in more trouble than our incumbents,” she said. 

Neubauer cited recent polling from A Better Wisconsin Together that found Democrats ahead in five of the most competitive Assembly districts, saying she is “optimistic” about the chances at Democratic trifecta control of state government in January. 

With this optimism, she said she’s looking at how to learn from the examples of states such as Michigan and Minnesota for how to manage newly won Democratic control. She said she’s working with Senate Majority Leader Dianne Hesselbein and has had conversations with the Democrats running for governor to start planning how to prioritize. 

She said that lowering costs for regular people while easing the burdens facing schools and local governments would be among the first items on the agenda. Beyond those, she said that with majority control, Democrats would likely revive the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program after its expiration this summer, regulate the growth of data centers and enact “pro-democracy” measures such as a bill to begin processing absentee ballots on the Monday before an election. 

To pay for these plans, she said that Democrats are looking at revenue generating actions such as legalizing recreational and medicinal cannabis, increasing the corporate tax rate and raising income taxes on millionaires and billionaires. 

On the governor’s race, she said she believes it’s healthy to have a vibrant primary race, even if it’s frustrating when one side has a crowded primary while the other has consolidated around one candidate. 

She said she’s spoken with all the candidates and it’s important to think about who can win in November, but it was unlikely she would endorse a candidate before the primary election in August. She added that Democratic primary voters in Wisconsin have been kept from having a say in their general election candidates in recent years. 

“I do think that we have a really good field,” she said. “I’m very confident that voters are going to elect somebody to go up against Tom Tiffany and win in November.”