Gov. Scott Walker set to unveil budget plan this week

MADISON (WITI) -- This week, Gov. Scott Walker is set to unveil his budget -- a two-year spending plan for Wisconsin, and many are eager to see what he plans for education and taxes.

Gov. Walker has spent the past few weeks unveiling his budget piece-by-piece.

"One of the reasons we're doing it this way -- highlighting different things on different days is two years ago we had to make some difficult decisions. We had a $3.6 billion budget deficit. Today we're in a much better position," Gov. Walker said.

Now the question is what to do with a nearly half-billion dollar surplus.

"We haven't heard exactly where he's going with tax relief.  It'll be interesting to see, but we haven't heard what he's doing with school funding either," state Representative Jon Richards (D - Milwaukee) said.

Those are two big question marks for Richards, who sits on the Joint Finance Committee.

"Now that we have a little bit of extra money, we need to make sure middle class families get a budget that's balanced in its approach," Richards said.

Gov. Walker promises an income tax cut, but he's holding the details for his speech.

"The one thing I will tell you in advance of the budget address is we're going to try to target the mid range of the tax code," Gov. Walker said.

State Democrats argue the 2011 budget gutted education spending.

"The last budget we made it difficult for people to get a good education," Richards said.

Democrats say before any tax cut, that funding should be restored to the schools.

"I'm going to reward schools that have rapid growth in terms of improvement of schools and I'm going to put money in this budget to target schools that are failing, with the idea being they only get to grab that money if they can show us what they're going to do to fundamentally change what they've been doing thus far, because I don't want to put more money into something that's not working," Gov. Walker said.

Gov. Walker is set to address a joint session of the Legislature at the state Capitol on Wednesday evening.