Following up on last week's "Testin's Throwback Thursday" post about the 2025-27 state budget, I want to shift the focus to some of the measures we incorporated into the fiscal plan to help Wisconsinites keep more money in their pockets.

As the Senate vice-chair of the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee, one of my top priorities was to provide the residents of Wisconsin with meaningful tax relief.

We accomplished this goal by expanding the second-lowest tax bracket of 4.4 percent to include married couples with incomes up to $67,300 and single filers up to $50,480.

As a result, middle-class couples are seeing an annual savings of close to $300 and middle-class individuals are retaining nearly $180.

About 83 percent of the cut is going to taxpayers earning less than $200,000 annually. All told, this budget provision is benefiting more than 1.6 million residents across our state.

Next week, we will look at the section in the budget pertaining to tax cuts on retirement income.