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Governor has kept ‘some’ campaign promises

If ignorance is bliss then this letter will not upset certain readers of the County Post who support Scott Walker with their delusional statement, “Gov. Walker has kept his campaign promises.”

It would be more accurate to say he has kept “some” of his promises, such as the one to make it easier for hunters to get a big buck by killing the DNR’s “earn a buck” requirement of recent years. I know it made a lot of hunters happy, but I don’t think a governor should use his power to override a state department knowledgeable about the environment so he can make and fulfill a “feel good” promise.

Then there is the promise about voluntarily paying his state worker pension benefit upon taking office that he broke. This is fact. Ignore it if it makes you happy.

Certainly there are more promises that he has kept but there are also more he has not. So let’s look at the most important ones.

First, there is the promise to create 250,000 jobs and 10,000 businesses in Wisconsin in four years. Technically, he has four years to fulfill this promise but at the rate he is going can we afford to give him that time? Just the other day, the news media reported, “Governor Walker’s new jobs plan.” Wow. It took one year just to come up with a simple idea like helping to train unemployed workers. If anyone else worked that slow they would be fired. This helps explain the recall.

Out of one side of his mouth, Walker says he can create jobs and out of the other side he says that government kills jobs. No wonder the people who believe him are confused.

But here is the broken promise we need to be most concerned about. While campaigning, Walker made a promise that he would use the Generally Accepted Accounting Principle or GAAP to balance all his budgets. Using the GAAP there are certain tricks you can’t use to make it look like you are better off than you really are.

Well guess what? This first budget of his, the one that he touts in all his television commercials by saying, “I promised to balance the budget and that’s exactly what I did,” this budget was not balanced using GAAP as promised. When asked about this, the governor’s office asked that the promise be judged after the next budget.

Using GAAP, the state of Wisconsin currently has a $3 billion deficit, compared to a $2.9 billion deficit left by the last governor. So, if Walker is given the time to try to fulfill his promise of balancing the budget using GAAP, the cuts have only begun. He has carefully used this first year in office to empower his office and if you think things are bad now, you haven’t seen nothing yet.

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