David Michael Miller
Gov. Scott Walker finally signed a new budget, just in time to announce that he is running for president. The budget was 12 days late, garnered more “no” votes from Walker’s GOP colleagues than any other budget he has tried to pass, and was described by at least two Republicans in the state Legislature as “crap.”
But never mind all that. Walker is embarking on another round of visits to early primary states. Wisconsin is in the rearview mirror for him.
Walker is busy impressing the right-wing base with his “bold,” “unintimidated” assaults on education, health care and the environment in his home state.
The budget he signed reflects the two main themes of his political career: destroying public institutions, from schools to parks, and eliminating oversight and accountability when it comes to spending public funds.
Here is a prime example: The state budget expands a school voucher program that, after 25 years, has not improved academic outcomes for children in Milwaukee. Instead of demanding better results, the new budget eliminates the requirement that voucher school students take the same standardized tests as students in the regular public schools.
Walker’s economic development record in Wisconsin, including his key promise to create 250,000 new jobs, has been a massive failure. He didn’t even make half of his goal, and has developed a severe case of amnesia about that job-creation promise. Wisconsin lags the nation and is at the bottom of our region in job creation, and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., the agency Walker put together to help create those jobs, has been better at giving away money to his campaign contributors than it has been at tracking actual jobs.
To deal with the bad news about WEDC and other examples of cronyism and shady dealings, some unnamed person inserted a provision in the budget to make state government impervious to open records requests. The language in the budget provision closely tracked the language the Walker administration has used to deny open records requests on the grounds that telling the public how policy is made would have a chilling effect on policymakers. That item, at least, was quickly withdrawn after it raised a howl from Democrats and Republicans alike.
You have to hand it to him, though: Walker is bold. Take the provision in the state budget that singles out Dane County and rewrites our water quality plan. Walker, who is almost never home at the governor’s mansion on Lake Mendota, signed a budget that includes a special gift arranged by state legislators for local developers: taking away local control over water quality in our community. No more local efforts to deal with the runoff that pollutes our lakes. The state is in charge now, and we can’t have higher standards than those set forth in state law. Walker will be travelling and won’t have to smell the results.
The rest of us are going to have to live with the fallout from a state budget Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) aptly described as throwing the people of Wisconsin under Walker’s campaign bus.
Thousands of citizens from all over the state turned out to object to the sustained, historic cuts to K-12 education in Wisconsin. Thanks to the massive cuts to the university and the elimination of tenure, star professors have been packing up their millions in grant money and heading for greener pastures.
Then there were the goodies like getting rid of the wage floor for construction workers (Walker issued a special statement proudly announcing that his budget rolls back this New Deal-era protection for workers) and repealing the weekend so employees can “volunteer” to work seven days in a row.
Walker and his supporters continue to tout the fact that he survived a recall effort and “stood up” to unions in Wisconsin, while cutting taxes and making the “tough” choices to slash public funds.
But voters don’t like what has happened to our state as a result of his “unintimidated,” “divide-and-conquer” style.
The latest Marquette polls show Walker has a 41% approval rating in the state and a 56% disapproval rating. Only 39.8% of Wisconsinites say they would vote for Walker for president.
That laughter you hear is coming from Minnesota, where raising the minimum wage, increasing taxes on the top 2% and investing in education helped spur an economic boom that, in comparison, makes Wisconsin look more and more like Alabama — the only state in the union to cut per-pupil spending on public school students more than Wisconsin did. Sure, Minnesota has a clean environment and great schools, but come to Wisconsin and consider a career in sharecropping!
No wonder Walker refused to denounce the Confederate flag.
Ruth Conniff is editor of The Progressive magazine.
