Despite millions of dollars in anonymously funded Republican attack ads and an election eve decision by a Republican appeals court that could disenfranchise many Democrats, the governor’s race is finally focused on what really matters. That’s the damage inflicted on Wisconsin’s economy by the actions of Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Walker, who brags about closing a large budget deficit, can no longer cover up the fact that his own budget manipulations will create an enormous budget deficit of nearly $1.8 billion for whoever is governor in January. The Walker budget deficit would be the third largest in state history. What may surprise voters confused by Walker’s dishonest distortions of the record of his predecessor, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, is that the $2.5 billion deficit Walker inherited from Doyle after a massive national recession was not the largest budget deficit any governor ever faced. The largest deficit in state history was the $2.9 billion budget deficit Doyle inherited in 2003 from Republican Gov. Scott McCallum. And here’s the most important thing to know about that. Doyle closed the largest budget gap in state history without destroying bargaining rights for public employees, without making the largest cuts to education in state history and without slashing state revenue sharing to every city, county, town, village and school district in Wisconsin. And it is precisely because Walker chose to do all those things that he is limping into November’s election having severely damaged Wisconsin’s economy, dead last in job creation in the Midwest, creating barely more than 100,000 of the 250,000 jobs he promised voters to get elected.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 19:01:59 +0000
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