Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature are scrambling to come up with ideas on how to limit Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ unusually expansive veto powers — including possibly by crafting their budget bills using artificial intelligence models, reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Tuesday.
This comes after Evers used a bizarre quirk of his office’s veto powers to transform a two-year school funding increase he felt was too restrictive into a funding increase each year for 402 years.
“Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said April 22 his caucus would discuss ways to craft the 2025-27 state budget in a way that reduces opportunities for Evers to use his partial veto authority in a manner similar to an edit he made in the last state budget that extended funding increases for schools for 402 years,” reported Molly Beck.
Vos told reporters during an interview on WISN-AM, “We are already meeting with our attorneys. We’ve begun the process of saying, ‘How can we work around this ruling?’ If the court says you can strike digits and numbers, well, now we’ll have to not use digits and numbers. And the best thing about technology and AI is that, you know, in the push of a button, it can all be done.”
Another last-resort option they are reportedly considering is to simply not pass a budget at all.
Vos told reporters during an interview on WISN-AM, “We are already meeting with our attorneys. We’ve begun the process of saying, ‘How can we work around this ruling?’ If the court says you can strike digits and numbers, well, now we’ll have to not use digits and numbers. And the best thing about technology and AI is that, you know, in the push of a button, it can all be done.”
Another last-resort option they are reportedly considering is to simply not pass a budget at all.
