Seriously, Dana. What's the Point?

Scott Walker finds making bumper stickers is easier than creating jobs

By Dana Milbank, Published: June 20

Where are the jobs, Gov. Walker?

Scott Walker, the chief executive of Wisconsin, is riding a wave of triumph.

Yeah, that guy kind of kicks ass.

The state Supreme Court just upheld his famous crusade

Seriously? Crusade?

to strip collective bargaining rights from public workers.

That’s mildly misleading; the court decision had nothing to do with the actual law, which is universally acknowledged as adherent to both the state and federal constitutions. Nor did it pertain to anything Governor Walker actually did. The case sought to litigate the legislative procedure. (The one, you’ll recall, Wisconsin Democrats worked so gallantly to undermine by sauntering over the Illinois state line.) And even that was upheld.

The state legislature just voted, along party lines, to approve his 2012 budget reordering the state’s finances to his conservative tastes.

This sentence is kind of cute. But trying to blame Walker for the rank partisanship in the Wisconsin legislature shows that Milbank has pinpoint precision on par with that of Charlie Sheen in the beginning of Major League.

“…JUST a bit outside…”

These Democrats are the same people who would rather strong-arm a pregnant colleague into staying on the lam in Illinois than undertake the legislative process.

On Monday morning, Walker stopped by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to participate in a roundtable discussion about “what works and what doesn’t” in job creation. Walker regaled the assembled business leaders and governors with tales of his job-creating acumen.

Note the implication that Walker and “business leaders” are close. Not close, Walker “regaled” them. He showed off his “acumen.” The implication, of course, is that Scott Walker is some sort of business seducer--a lothario of the balance sheet, willing to whisper sweet nothings for positive cash flow. Nevermind that Jeffrey Immelt laughs just a little too hard at Obama’s jokes.

He boasted about passing tort reform, tax cuts, a “major regulatory reform” and his celebrated fight against the public-sector unions. “That’s powerful for job creators out there,” he said.

How powerful? “Since the beginning of the year in Wisconsin we’ve seen 25,000 new jobs,” Walker reported.

Sorry, governor, but that’s not very powerful.

I guess Walker doesn’t get the benefit of the “jobs created or lost” categorization that Obama has spent two years trumpeting. Or the goodwill and political capital from the election. It’s only been SIX MONTHS. I FEEL LIKE I’M TAKING CRAZY PILLS.

Instead of using some arbitrary sliding scale for what constitutes “good” job growth and what constitutes “bad” job growth, let’s just compare Walker with his predecessor. Taking the last year only, Jim Doyle saw an average increase in the total number of Wisconsin jobs of .05%. Walker has averaged .19%. Jim Doyle saw an increase of 10,565 seasonally-adjusted jobs over the last seven months of his term. Scott Walker has nearly tripled that number 27,060 in five months worth of data. Also, Scott Walker trounced Jim Doyle in a best of 7 Monopoly tournament shortly before being elected, and nearly broke Doyle’s wrist off in an arm wrestling bout.

Do these numbers take into account nation-wide trends or a myriad of other relevant factors? Of course not. I love me some Excel, but I’m far too lazy for that level of interest—which still leaves me eminently more thorough than Milbank, who basically set his macroeconomic expectations with a dartboard and a bottle of Scotch.  

The point is, Scott Walker is a significantly better governor, athlete, person, and (if the ladies of Alpha Epsilon Phi at the University of Wisconsin are to be trusted on such things) lover than Jim Doyle… It might have just gotten weird.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Wisconsin’s nonfarm payroll in May was 2,764,300 on a seasonally-adjusted basis, up 20,300 from January’s 2,744,000.That’s an increase of seven-tenths of one percent in the workforce -- not much better than the anemic nationwide growth in nonfarm payrolls to 131,043,000 in May from 130,328,000 in January.

That might be relevant if the situation facing Wisconsin were anywhere close to the situation facing the country as a whole. (It’s not.) The rust belt has a fairly unique set of challenges that people in California, Texas, or Massachusetts, frankly, don’t relate to.

Wisconsin’s unemployment rate (7.4%) is well below the national rate (9.2%). What that should tell you is that the recession was far more shallow in Wisconsin than other places, particularly regional counterparts like Michigan or Illinois. This, of course, means that job growth and economic recovery will not be as robust in locations that were harder hit. That doesn’t mean that Wisconsin is doing worse.

This doesn’t mean Walker’s policies have failed;

No shit, dumbass. It’s only been six months.

by his own account, the benefits could take years to materialize. But it does suggest that the conservatives criticizing the Obama administration’s handling of the economy don’t have a silver bullet of their own.

No, it doesn’t mean that at all. It means that in four months of being governor, Wisconsin has slightly over-performed the national average, despite being situated for a more tempered recovery. Both the absolute unemployment rate and the pace of jobs improvement for Wisconsin are better than average. What exactly are we lamenting?

Given that the public sector union fight dominated the state political agenda for much of the winter and early spring, Governor Walker spent most of his political capital on that very worthy fight. Given the frivolous judicial battle that Milbank referenced mere sentences ago incorporated a stop on implementation, this policy has barely taken effect. But here’s the kicker: the law to which Milbank is referring with regards to public sector unions isn’t even an attempt at spurring job growth; it was designed to inject fiscal sanity into the Madison budget and avoid a reality that necessitated future job-killing tax hikes. By Milbank’s own admission, the legislature also “just voted” on his budget. That little piece of policy isn’t even law yet. That’s right. It hasn’t even been signed.

So when you say that Republicans don’t have a silver bullet—after a mere six months in office—it’s really that they haven’t finished loading the gun yet.

Walker, who has large Republican majorities in the Wisconsin legislature, experimented with a long conservative wish-list, but the state hasn’t been a standout in job creation during his six-month tenure.

This is like criticizing a well-regarded baseball prospect for batting .285 in a call-up to the big leagues. Sure, those aren’t exactly Pete Rose numbers, but it’s a little early to ship the kid off to Oakland for a low-A lefty and a couple of fungos.

The truth is that there’s not much more that government can do to boost jobs in the short term.

Not from what’s in the liberal playbook, at least. That’s why the Obama camp is collectively shitting itself right now.

Refreshing to hear it admitted from the left, though.

That’s up to the private sector now.

Well this is a hell of a time to turn into a rugged individualist, but I’ll take converts wherever I can get them.

Corporate America has recovered so well that profits have been at or near record levels of an annualized $1.7 trillion in the last two quarters – but businesses have yet to spend their piles of cash.

Boy, corporations stockpiling cash sounds precisely like the type of thing that regulation-busting legislation could fix. Maybe by decreasing outlay costs, adding certainty to cash flow projections and reducing annual expenditures would overcome those corporate hurdle rates to get NPVs for reinvestment projects into the black. If only there was a political party that had been saying that for the last couple years!

Instead, flush CEOs are demanding still more government spending.

Yet more proof that corporate executives generally aren’t real capitalists. Even so, it’s more the Democratic leadership that’s pushing more government spending.

This was a theme of Monday’s session at the Chamber, where 23 men and one woman sat around a u-shaped table and listened to Chamber president Tom Donohue describe states as “laboratories of democracy,” where businesses are more likely to find “common sense solutions, innovations, experimentations, bipartisanship.”

I don’t disagree, but it’s kind of like trying to get seismic readings while riding a massive bull. The highest state corporate income tax bracket is in, of all places, Iowa, at 12%. (Most are 4%-8%) Federal corporate tax rates run between 15% and 35%. At the high end, federal tax plays about four times as much into the decision-making of a firm.

Walker, whose tenure has made Wisconsin more of a laboratory of theocracy,

That isn’t even close to the right word for this situation, you oblong jabberwocky!

clenched his jaw at the mention of bipartisanship. “The very first day I was elected,”

Technically, Mr. Walker, it was the only day you got elected—for governor at least. (I can’t not give shit, even when I want to like the guy.)

he said when his turn came, “I put up a sign that said, ‘Wisconsin is open for business.’” He waved a bumper sticker for the Chamber crowd with that same message. “I called the legislature into a special session based solely on jobs.”

Of course, that has nothing to do with jobs, primarily because bipartisanship has nothing to do with jobs.

That led to the fight over collective bargaining, the fleeing of Democratic legislators across state lines, and huge protests in Madison. “We got a little more attention than most,” he said.

I may be 150 miles south, but I can still smell those hippies in the capitol.

The attention continued on Monday. Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, one of two Democrats on the panel, said he “took a different approach” than Walker did: “I invited the unions to the table.” Markell said that the cuts he got from the unions exceeded his target by 30 percent, without creating statewide bitterness.

Sounds like his target was pretty low. (In addition, Markell—or his successor—will have to renegotiate soon, in conditions that are far more likely to favor the union.)

The other Democrat, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, implicitly rebuked Walker when he said “with a Republican House and Democratic Senate we passed our budget with at least 75 percent in both houses.”

Little known fact: the Colorado legislature also recently passed a series of internal rules whereby they have abandoned the Pledge of Allegiance in favor of singing Kumbaya before getting down to state business. Hickenlooper brings the guitar and afterwards, they just jam. Hippies from Boulder are invited to form a drum circle, and everyone shares a hearty meal of granola.

In terms of job-creation, neither Democrat’s approach has worked any better than Walker’s. Colorado added 9,000 non-farm jobs this year and Delaware has been flat. Iowa, represented on the panel by Republican Gov. Terry Branstad, added 12,000. Virginia, represented by Gov. Bob McDonnell, added 22,000.

Compared to those geniuses, Walker might as well be Ronald Reagan!

The biggest job creator of the six, Gov. Rick Scott (R-Fla.),

Why is it that I keep seeing R’s after the names of the governors of job-creating states and D’s after the names of unethical legislators?

boasted that his tax cuts, deregulation and tort reform enabled him to cut “unemployment every month since I came into office, and last month our job creation was more than the entire rest of the country.” That’s nice, but even Scott’s job growth amounts to just 1 percent of the state’s workforce, and Florida’s unemployment is among the highest in the country.

I’m not sure how you intend to get significant job growth by shitting on modest job growth and praising anemic job growth.

Eventually, the governors – like President Obama – will have more to show for their job-creation policies.

Walker has been in office for six months. Obama’s been sitting in the Oval Office five times as long. The comparison rings a little hollow when you’re talking about giving them time until the economic recovery kicks in. Besides, Obama’s still blaming Bush.

But for now, they’ll have to settle for baby steps.

So the moral of this article is: “Republicans are significantly better at governing than Democrats, but I don’t like them very much, so they’re not good enough!”

Walker told the Chamber that Wisconsin moved up 17 places in Chief Executive magazine’s annual ranking. “Last year we were 41,” he said. “This year, we went up to No. 24.”

An excellent achievement for the governor.

If only those happy CEOs would start hiring.

This piece was a complete waste of time.

danamilbank@washpost.com