A fascinating read from the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau about the history of this remarkably potent veto: https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/misc/lrb/r

A fascinating read from the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau about the history of this remarkably potent veto: https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/misc/lrb/reading_the_constitution/reading_the_constitution_4_1.pdf https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/misc/lrb/reading_the_consti... Long ago, Wisconsin added a clause to their state constitution to allow the governor to approve appropriation bills "in whole or in part." No language specified what that actually meant, and so the state supreme court has basically said that as long as the result is a valid law, then the use of the veto is valid. This is true even when the result directly reverses legislative intent, such as vetoing the word "not." The court has also found that the governor is not restricted to the actual digits in quantities -- for instance, if the legislature appropriates $50M for something, then the governor can reduce that to $18M because the missing $32M difference is "a part" of what the bill contained. The partial veto received a partial nerf in 1990 and again in 2008, with amendments that combine to read: "In approving an appropriation bill in part, the governor may not create a new word by rejecting individual letters in the words of the enrolled bill, and may not create a new sentence by combining parts of 2 or more sentences of the enrolled bill." This leaves plenty of room for shenanigans. The legislature has frequently litigated the use of partial veto in the past, hoping to limit its power. This might be another time they do that.