Governor Evers beat Tim Michels by 90,000 votes in November, 2022, earning the former teacher and superintendent of public schools, and teachers’ union ally another four years in charge of the Badger State. He presides with a Wisconsin 99-seat state house controlled by Republicans, 63-35 with one vacancy. Wisconsin’s 33-seat senate is also controlled by Republicans, 21-11, with one vacancy. Large Republican margins, but just shy of the two-thirds needed to override vetoes. Now we enter the wacky world of partial vetoes.

In 1930, Wisconsin adopted a law allowing for the governor to whittle away at bills, vetoing stuff he or she doesn’t like, and approving everything else. The law went unchanged for about 60 years until the Tommy Thompson era. In 1995, Thompson was sued because he lowered an appropriation measure, which came to be known as a reduction veto. The state’s supreme court in a 4-3 decision upheld Thompson’s veto.

There also was legal action in the early 1990s, including an amendment to the state’s constitution in an attempt to stop the use of what was called the Vanna White veto, adding or subtracting letters and/or words to make the text read entirely differently. As the law stands now, governors are limited to not change bill language to create or make new words that weren’t there. The governor can slice and dice through text with a Ginsu knife, but cannot technically add something new not in the original language. Everything else counts.

Molly Beck and Jessie Opoien in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel shared the story Wednesday of how Governor Evers thwarted the Republicans’ $3.5 billion dollar tax cutting measure, knocking it down to $175 million, and giving public schools a guaranteed income stream increase per child of $325 over each previous year…for the next four hundred years compounded annually.

The original language of the measure read schools would get a $325 dollar per student raise for this upcoming school year, 2023-2024, and for next year, 2024-2025. That’s it. But that’s not what ended up surviving Governor Ever’s magic marker.

By striking out the words, numbers and characters “the”, “24”, “school year and the 20”, “-“, and “school year”, Governor Evers just signed into law a promise to fund a per student increase of $325 dollars until the end of the school year, 2425.

Now because math isn’t something that translates to radio very much, I thought I’d try my hand to explain just what we’re talking about here. As of 2020, Wisconsin spent $12,740 per student, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum.

So use this number as a baseline. Add $325 dollars to it. You come up with a new baseline. Remember, this formula backed into by Governor Evers compounds the economic cliff he just sailed the entire state over, Thelma and Louis-style. Now take the new baseline, add $325, and rinse and repeat, FOUR HUNDRED TWO TIMES.

Long after Tony Evers, currently at 71-years young, becomes a worm feast, and long after his kids, his grandkids, and their grandkids, and even their grandkids have assumed room temperature, to quote the late Rush Limbaugh, flash forward to the Year 2425. We’ll still be a century before Zager and Evans are finally put to the prophecy test, but we know one thing for certain. Wisconsinites will be on the hook for $143,390 dollars per student.

Before we reveal the grand total of what that looks like, a few caveats that could change the calculus between now and then.

• Three Democrats could realize just how insane that is and go along with Republicans to override this nonsense, making the whole thing moot.
• Republicans win the governor’s mansion in 2026, limiting the damage.
• Yellowstone blows, rendering the entire middle of the country moot for 50 years.
• The Chicoms, 250 years after taking over the United States, treat Wisconsin as the new Xinjiang Province.
• The sweet meteor of death almost assuredly takes place.
• Robots will be in charge and none of this will matter.

But unless and until any of those scenarios change the equation, here’s the brunt of what Governor Evers has done. There are currently 846,693 kids enrolled in schools in Wisconsin. Assume for the sake of the argument that this number remains somewhat static. It’ll probably be higher by then, but who knows? 846,693 multiplied by $143,390 in the outer years of the new Evers education funding bonanza comes out to $121,407,309,270. That’s $121.4 trillion dollars and change…annually. And that’s not counting any cost of living increases or other pandering to be done over the next few centuries.

In short, by crossing out half a sentence and removing a hyphen, this is what the legislature just said to Governor Evers.

The partial veto is a very alluring concept when you think about it resting in the hands of a Republican governor with a Democratic-led state legislature. But when the shoe is on the other foot, it can lead to economic ruin. I just hope the next Republican running for governor there, and even a Republican presidential candidate when Wisconsin gets close, brings this up. I would think Wisconsinites might be surprised and more than a little panicked to think they’ve just been put on the hook for a bill that cannot possibly be paid. The fun part of this? Just wait until the Democrats of the future and the regime media see the plans by a future Republican to fix this. It’ll be presented as the mother of all austerity measures. You can see the headlines now, right?

“Republicans in Madison attempt to cut trillions from schoolkids.” It’ll be epic.