Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has created a problem for himself. He made a big promise in his 2010 campaign that he's nowhere near having fulfilled. Walker said he'd lead Wisconsin companies to create 250,000 new jobs in four years. The reality, nearly three-and-a-half years in, is less than 110,000. Walker is flailing, looking for a way to spin his failure to fulfill his campaign promise, but there's no real way to explain away 140,000 missing jobs. So Walker's gone for a not-real way to explain it. He's going around bragging about 17,000 new businesses having been created in Wisconsin while he was governor.
Small problem:
Walker's count includes hundreds of nonprofit organizations such as Scout troops, youth athletic leagues and condo associations. It also includes thousands of limited-liability companies that often are set up by real estate investors simply as holding companies for property. Walker's count, according to PolitiFact, includes out-of-state companies that register in Wisconsin because they might one day want to do business here. And the governor's list includes start-ups that are barely organized.
That's not what you'd think, to hear the governor tell it. Walker has suggested that all of the new entities he has recently cited are producing jobs or soon will be. As PolitiFact noted, Walker told a Door County business group in April: "On average — some will do more, some will do less — but if in the next year or so they each add up to 10 new employees, you add that to the more than 100,000 new jobs we've created and you see we surpass 250,000 new jobs."
Quick, Scout troop, get cracking. You've got 10 jobs to create!
Really, governor? Even if these were all real businesses that wanted to hire, 17,000 of them have been registered over three years. But it's now, in the final eight months of your term as governor, that they're going to spring into action and create an average of 10 jobs apiece? That there is some nuclear-grade wishful thinking.
The fact is that under Walker, Wisconsin's jobs picture has been terrible, despite being the thing he was allegedly most focused on. No amount of wild claims or wishful thinking can make that go away.
For more discussion, see Puddytat's diary.