Exclusive: 2025 policy and legislative plan

This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/mike-nichols-2025-policy-and-legislative-plan/

From the desk of Mike Nichols, Badger Institute President

The 132 members of the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate who will head to the Capitol this January will include at least 35 who have never before held office. Many of them, as befits a citizen legislature, will continue to hold other jobs.

Our vow for the year ahead is to remind the ones who love government that they are there to serve a greater good and their hard-working neighbors — not themselves.

But our primary and most important goals: Help the good ones succeed — and make sure all Wisconsinites receive the full picture of the issues (not just the liberal half of it) through research and stories that help them decide what sort of state they want to live in.

We’re asking you today to please help us achieve that with a tax-deductible donation to the Badger Institute.

Odd-numbered years are the big ones in Madison. That’s when the real decisions are made.

We have a plan of action that we’re asking you to support with a donation as we head into the next legislative budget session.

Our policy priorities for the 2025 legislative session:

Education

Finding solutions to the teacher pipeline issue through research, storytelling, coalition-building, identification of policy reforms, and advocacy. Removing school choice funding from local property taxes so families can choose schools anywhere in the state. Continuing our successful push for better funding for parental choice and charters and other innovative school models.

Energy

Utilities are dramatically reducing reliable electric capacity by retiring baseload generation and replacing it with intermittent sources of electricity, generally wind turbines and solar panels. A solution that deserves an honest look: small modular reactors. We will persuade legislators across the political spectrum to sign on to a resolution supporting openness to consideration of increased nuclear power generation.

Housing

Housing in much of Wisconsin and the rest of the country is too expensive. We will measure housing affordability in up to two dozen different Wisconsin communities, illustrate the idiocy of rent control and big government subsidies, and focus on deregulation to increase supply and drive down cost. We will put a face on the research with stories and videos, and make sure it is used by policymakers and elected officials at both the municipal and state levels.

More broadly

We have a vision for this state and long-term goals: Tax reform and reining in wasteful government grants, a free-market childcare solution, and civil society remedies to our problems instead of government control. Better schools. Less waste. Responsible spending. An end to welfare without work.

Journalism

We do much more than push for conservative solutions — we are the conservative watchdogs in Madison and throughout the state. We make sure that Wisconsinites have the facts and stories they can’t get anywhere else. Good journalism is expensive. If you believe that our work is valuable and important, I hope you’ll feel compelled to support it.

In the coming year

We will use our policy and journalism to help make sure everyone has an opportunity to work and prosper and live their lives as they choose. We have a plan to reach more than 100,000 Wisconsinites on a regular basis. But we need your support to do that, to help pay our journalists and policy analysts, build our email lists, and boost our outreach.

The most lasting, meaningful investment you can make for our state is by giving to the Badger Institute today.