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WMC Watch Reports

One Wisconsin Now is committed to examining, investigating and exposing WMC's pro-corporate agenda and dishonest issue advertisements. The following reports aim to shine a light on some of WMC's most blatant distortions, half-truths and pro-corporate talking points.

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The WMC Scorecard: Roll Call of Corporate Sycophants

At the end of every legislative session, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce releases its highly-anticipated scorecard. “Highly anticipated,” because it offers the public a barometer of the power of the state’s largest corporate lobby. The following report from One Wisconsin Now’s WMC Watch is compiled from the two most recent legislative sessions, the four-year period from 2005-08.

WMC Fact Check: Taxes

In 2000 the median income was $78,123. By 2006 it had fallen to $72,495. With the dramatic increase in energy prices and health care costs in that same period, families are having to do much more with less resources.

WMC Fact Check: Health Care

In 2004, the four biggest health insurers reported just around $100 billion in revenues, after pouring $300 million of that into lobbying in 2003. Opponents of universal health care claim a single-payer system would be too expensive, but the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation estimated such an endeavor, on a national scale, would cost about $69 billion a year – the cost of repealing the Bush tax cuts for those in the top 5 percent of income earners.

WMC Fact Check: Environment

In 2004, oil executives benefited from massive price increases to double their annual compensation packages to an average of $16 million a year – the highest median for any industry in America.

WMC Fact Check: Corporate Taxes

A series of exemptions for business property over the last 30 years has shifted the property tax burden from businesses to homeowners, who pay nearly 70 percent of all property taxes today.