Anytime you turn on Fox news or NBC Business, you might here some Supply-Sider telling you how government is standing in the way of Businesses. You'll likely here examples of how Scott Walker or Rick Snider or some other Republican Governor is turning their state into a laboratory of Conservative policies, bringing businesses into their states and creating a climate for economic success. But take a closer look at the numbers and a different story begins to appear.
No better example emerges than that of Wisconsin and Minnesota. They are two neighbors with opposite policies, opposite parties in power and very different economies.
For years, Wisconsin and Minnesota ran neck and neck for economic outlook, with Wisconsin slightly ahead on most measures of economic health. Then came the Great Recession. Both states were pretty evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. So were their policies. Both recoveries were similar and steady with neither state particularly exceptional. But then the two states took radically different paths.
Republican Scott Walker was elected Governor of Wisconsin in 2010, just as the economic recovery began. Democrat Mark Dayton was elected Governor of Minnesota in 2011.
Scott Walker has used his Governance to push through an agenda that makes other Republican Governors jealous. From making banning collective bargaining for public employees, to draconian cuts in public spending, Scott Walker's Wisconsin has been one giant give away to business interests, the results of which have been mixed at best.
Wisconsin jobs have yet to return to pre-recession levels. Budget deficits due to Walker's tax cuts are beginning to appear, even with drastic cuts to education, public employee health plans and pensions, (equivalent to an 8% reduction in take-home pay) and cuts in public investments and lower infrastructure spending. Scott Walker's decidedly Supply-Side policies, though certainly not as devastating as Sam Brownback's drastic cuts that have left Kansas in a hole almost too deep to clime out of, hasn't paid off quite the way Walker sold it to Wisconsinites.
With Wisconsin's long history of liberal politicians, one conservative governor hasn't been able to completely erase the institutions of left-wing state governments built over generations but he's certainly left his mark. Even now, he plans on signing a bill that would prevent unions from collecting dues from private-sector non union employees who benefit from union contracts. Wisconsin's economy has certainly benefited from the influx of mining, logging and drilling companies that have managed to reduce the states unemployment rate to 5.2%. But most of the 100,000 jobs created since Scott Walker was elected are low salary with few benefits and are far fewer in number than what the governor promised in his initial campaign.
Minnesota on the other hand has taken a very different path. Democratic Governor Mark Dayton has never been the kind of back-slapping politician most of us are used to. After an uneventful term as senator in 2000, where he was rated as one of the most ineffectual legislators. No one expected the Target family fortune heir to be elected to statewide office, let alone be able to push through an agenda that even Bernie Sanders would be impressed by.
When Mark Dayton was first elected Governor in 2011, Minnesota handed him a Republican controlled legislature with a mandate. There wasn't much the awkward Dayton could do but veto bill after bill to prevent the kind of agenda that Scott Walker pushed on Wisconsin from being stuffed down the throats of Minnesotans.
After a lengthy Government shut down in 2011, Dayton was pretty much expected to be a lame duck. But when Republicans put two constitutional amendments on the ballot in 2012, one for a ban on same-sex marriage and another to implement a strict voter ID law similar to the one passed in Wisconsin, voters went the other direction. Not only did the voters of Minnesota reject the ballot initiatives, they swept Democrats into power with a huge majority.
After years of being one of the least effective politicians in Minnesota's history, Dayton wasn't about to miss the chance to get something done. Even as Scott Walker was slashing budgets and taxes, Dayton began raising them and spending on an unprecedented level.
Dayton passed a budget that included the largest income-tax increase in state history on the top 2% of earners. With the new revenues, Dayton pushed an agenda filled with spending increases and liberal policy initiatives like universal pre-k, minimum wage increases, a massive infrastructure spending bill, and huge increases to health and education budgets including a freeze on college tuition hikes. Far from the ballot initiatives Republicans tried and failed to pass, Dayton passed a same-sex marriage bill and expanded early voting and succeeded with a large voter registration effort.
The results of Dayton's liberal wish list have been reaffirming. Instead of losing businesses as Republicans in the legislature warned would happen, Minnesota's unemployment rate has fallen dramatically.
At 3.6%, Minnesota's unemployment rate is now one of the lowest in the country. Forbes recently ranked Minnesota as #9 for best business climate in the country. This is the second year in a row Minnesota has made it in on the top ten list in Forbes. At $60,311, Minnesota's Median household income is $8,000 above the national average. The state is enjoying benefits in every metric for measuring an economy thanks to Dayton's unapologetic Keynesian economic agenda. Of course, there was a time the whole country believed in the benefits of a strong, activist central government, a good education and poverty reduction as a method of increasing economic outlook.
This isn't just ideological. Republicans increasingly reject good science in favor of voodoo economics and religious zealotry. There was once a man who said, "We're all Keynesians now!" Who was that man? Richard Nixon.