Wait, Scott Walker has a Jobs Plan?

Scott Walker is back in the state doubling down on his job creation promise, stating his administration has a jobs plan and will “continue to implement it” — when he hasn’t even achieved half of his original goal. Now, the governor is promising a new plan leaving Wisconsinites to wonder if this will be enough to complete his central campaign promise by the end of the year. 

Scott Walker made a promise to Wisconsin families that he would create 250,000 jobs by the end of his first term, a figure his own administration concedes he will not reach. To hide his failure Walker has resorted to the tactic of cherry-picking facts and discrediting jobs data that isn’t congruent with his political spin.

Last month, Walker attacked state Democrats for “political grandstanding” by advocating for raising the minimum wage in order to help struggling working-class families. The governor fervently opposes raising the minimum wage and directly helping more than 460,000 workers in the state who currently make less than $10.10 an hour. Instead, Walker maintains that his approach as governor has been to help employers create jobs.

The truth is that working-class households are still waiting for the Walker jobs plan released in September of 2010 to kick into gear. According to the latest and most accurate jobs data, Walker’s jobs policies have failed miserably at creating opportunities for struggling Wisconsinites. Wisconsin is 37th in the nation in job creation, 45th in prospective job growth and 48th, almost dead last, in new business start-ups. 

Over the past year, Wisconsin has created just 23,963 new jobs — a figure that puts our rate of growth at about half the national average. Adding insult to injury, the state added a grand total zero new net manufacturing jobs over the past year. Meanwhile, Scott Walker’s flagship jobs agency, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, has been plagued with scandal amid allegations of bid-rigging and a series of scathing audits that revealed the agency had violated state and federal law, misused taxpayer money, lost track of millions of dollars in taxpayer-financed loans, and lacked mechanisms to track whether a single verifiable job had been created.

“Scott Walker’s opposition to raising the minimum wage and helping the families he broke a central campaign promise to is perplexing,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said Thursday. “Scott Walker insists that he is pursuing policies to put Wisconsinites back to work, but reality doesn’t match his rhetoric — it shows he just isn’t serious about helping working-class families get back on track.”