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Glaring Omissions from Scott Walker's Re-Election Announcement PDF Print E-mail
News - Articles for State & Local
Written by Democratic Party of Wisconsin, Melissa Baldauff   
Wednesday, 16 April 2014 11:00

walker-claims-victoryMADISON - Scott Walker announced his candidacy for Governor, and painted a rosy picture of the state and the state economy, but he left out some key facts:

  1. Wisconsin is lagging behind the rest of the country when it comes to private sector job growth. The latest and most accurate jobs data shows we’re currently creating new jobs at nearly half the national average. Our state does not have a model economy for the nation or even our neighbors in the Midwest; we’re currently the second worst Midwest state when it comes to job growth over the last three years. That means since Walker took office in 2011 Wisconsin has fallen to ninth out of 10 Midwest states in job growth.
  2. Wisconsin was 11th in the country in job creation when Scott Walker took office, three years later we’ve plummeted down to 35th in the nation. Since 2011, Wisconsin continues to perform poorly in other key economic indicators completely ignored in Walker’s reelection announcement.
  3. Dane Manufacturing’s Troy Berg acknowledged that the governor is supposed to create a climate to create jobs in the state, well, if that’s a measurement of Walker’s progress as a leader and a governor, he’s failed Wisconsin miserably. Wisconsin tied for the fifth worst-performing state for entrepreneurship according the latest report. In fact, entrepreneurial activity in the state declined over the past year. Walker claimed Wisconsin was open for business when he became governor in 2011, but the data clearly shows otherwise. Walker has not created a climate for job creation at all. Trickel down policies over the last three years has us lagging behind in new business start-ups and suffering from declining economic activity. The result is not prosperity, its becoming ranked as the ninth worst state in the country for business - hardly the top ten ranking workers and families want to hear.
  4. After carefully omitting key facts and muddying the waters on Wisconsin’s real economic picture, Walker touted his lopsided tax plan that heavily favors the wealthiest individuals in the state. Walker has pursued failed, top-down tax policies that do nothing to create jobs or strengthen the middle class, but that reward the wealthiest and well-connected. Walker failed to mention that his tax plan would give away 67% of the tax cuts to households earning over $100,000. While middle class families’ share boils down to a measly $2 per week. A tax cut that gives away the lion share of benefits to the top is not a middle class tax cut by any stretch of the imagination.
  5. Walker also left out that Wisconsin's tax holiday (the day Wisconsin as a whole has earned enough money to pay its total tax bill for the year) was pushed back by two days, making Wisconsin’s tax holiday the 13th latest in the nation. This year Wisconsinites will have to work 112 days, or until April 22nd, to recognize Tax Freedom Day.

Walker’s omissions are not a coincidence; he’s flat out lying about his record and what he’s done during his first term because he knows he cannot run on a broken promise to create 250,000 new jobs by the end of his first term. University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh economics professor Kevin McGee recently opined that Walker’s record of job creation was a “total, utter failure”.

As Walker travels the state this week spewing rhetoric that his policies are working, McGee says “the rhetoric is exactly the point. Almost everything Walker has done as governor – the union busting, the tax breaks for the well connected – have been justified because “it will create jobs.” So yes, since that's the standard Walker has consistently raised, how well he's created job is a standard he should be held to.” The data shows Walker’s “reforms” have only widened the job gap. McGee writes, “the gap has steadily grown, to 20,000 jobs in December 2011, then 30,000 jobs by December 2012, and then 45,000 jobs last September. Since Walker took over, we've recovered only an additional 42 percent of our lost jobs, nearly last among our neighbors.”

Although Scott Walker does not want to talk about his job's record, he should still be judged by his “total, utter failure” to create jobs. Jobs are what he promised to the people of Wisconsin and the main sales pitch to voters since 2010 - not to mention his justification for pursuing some of the most extreme and partisan measures our state has seen in recent memory.

 
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