In a desperate attempt to be relevant, Joel Brennan has re-upped his campaign ad that tries to portray him as a champion of tax relief and economic reform in Wisconsin. The problem is that many of the accomplishments he hints at were actually delivered by Republican lawmakers and former Governor Scott Walker, not Brennan.
Wisconsin’s major tax reforms over the last decade came from Republican-led budgets that cut income taxes, reduced burdens on manufacturers and small businesses, and imposed spending discipline after years of chronic deficits, including the $3.6 billion deficit inherited by Governor Walker in 2011. Those reforms helped stabilize the state’s finances and improve Wisconsin’s economic climate.
Brennan now wants voters to associate him with those successes despite serving in an administration that pushed in the opposite direction.
As Secretary of the Department of Administration under Governor Tony Evers, Brennan oversaw budget proposals that dramatically increased state spending and repeatedly proposed massive tax hikes.
In 2021, the budget proposal created under Brennan’s DOA projected a structural deficit of $2 billion for our state, a warning sign that government commitments were growing faster than sustainable revenues.
That’s not fiscal responsibility like Brennan claims in his latest ad. It’s the same old kind of budgeting from Democrats that Wisconsin Republicans spent years escaping from.
Before the Republican led reforms, Wisconsin regularly faced budget shortfalls, accounting gimmicks, and pressure for higher taxes. Republican lawmakers changed that trajectory through spending restraint and pro-growth policies that encouraged private-sector investment rather than government expansion.
Now Brennan is attempting to take political credit for the very reforms he supported eliminating.
The reality is simple: Republicans in the Legislature and then Governor Scott Walker enacted the tax and fiscal reforms that reshaped Wisconsin’s fiscal solvency and economy. Brennan’s Department of Administration produced budgets built on higher spending, bigger government, and structural deficits.
Campaign ads can try to blur reality, but facts matter. And the facts are that Joel Brennan’s effort to repaint his history as one of fiscal responsibility is simply a failed attempt to gain traction in a messy Democratic primary.
