Last week, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia released their monthly coincident index report, which is an approximation of each state’s economic performance over the last 3 months. And Wisconsin did not do well.
That Phill Fed report earned Wisconsin and the other states in pink and red some national notice in Friday’s Washington Post Wonkblog, in an article titled “The seven states that are doing much worse than the rest.”
The main reason is historically low oil prices. The price of a barrel of Brent crude has fallen from over $100 in mid-2015 to less than $35 today. That is weighing on the economies of North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, Mississippi and Louisiana, which have extensive energy reserves and/or oil and gas refining facilities.
In Wisconsin and Illinois, fiscal issues and the sluggish performance of some manufacturing industries was likely to blame.
In total, 41 states saw their economies grow. The states with the strongest growth -- over 1 percent in the three-month period, according to the estimates -- include Oregon, Idaho, Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Georgia, West Virginia, New Jersey and Maine. Michigan and Oklahoma weren't fairing too well either at the end of 2015 -- the Philadelphia Fed's data shows that their economic growth was unchanged from three months before.
And that's not just a recent trend. Using those updated figures, we see that Wisconsin has the worst economy in the Midwest since Scott Walker took office at the start of 2011, as the chart at the top of the page points out. Also note the flattening in both here and Illinois in the last half of 2015
UW’s Menzie Chinn also talked about the coincident index with this post on Econbrowser, noting how ALEC states like Wisconsin and Kansas have failed to keep up with the growth in the rest of the country.
Yet here’s Gov Walker this week, trying to spin to the Portage Area Chamber of Commerce that things are just swell in Wisconsin (and using taxpayer dollars as part of this propaganda tour, no less).
Walker told the gathering he had good news to share, that unemployment in Wisconsin is the lowest it has been since 2001.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Wisconsin’s unemployment rate has been tracking downward through the second half of 2015, from 4.6 percent to 4.3 percent. This beats the national average that went from 5.3 percent to 5 percent over the same time. Walker said the state’s fiscal situation is far healthier than that of Illinois, which is running an unemployment rate almost a full percent above the national average.
First of all, anyone who has to reach for the train wreck in Illinois to make yourself look better already seems desperate. But second of all, Wisconsin has almost always had lower unemployment than the rest of the country for the last 30 years, and being 0.6% below the national rate (as it stands today) is underperforming that history, if anything. In addition, it’s well-documented that Wisconsin's drop in unemployment in the last year had as much to do with people leaving the labor force than it did with people finding jobs.
We also got further confirmation that things are still a mess when it comes to the state’s finances. And it came from none other than the one guy most responsible for causing the problem.
The governor responded to concerns raised on Tuesday by Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, at a Madison forum hosted by the Wisconsin Counties Association. Fitzgerald told county officials he expects the next budget will be "just as rough as this past one."
[Gov Scott] Walker told reporters Wednesday most of those concerns are tied to the national economy.
Wisconsin's large manufacturing sector is heavily influenced by national and global factors, Walker said.
"But we’re still going to persevere, and again, what we’ve done in the past is even if we’ve had adjustments on the revenue side, we’ve accommodated that through adjustments on the spending side. We’d look to do that forward," Walker said. "My focus is, whatever savings we can get in things like how we administer health insurance, I want to focus on more money for education."
What do you mean we are going to persevere, Scotty? We aren’t the ones able to take in 6 figures + benefits from the taxpayer (barring indictment). But we’re the ones that are already paying the price for your careless, crooked policies, and apparently will continue to have that pain continue to be inflicted on us.
The comments led to yet another hilarious and biting press release from the two Assembly Dems on the Joint Finance Committee- Gordon Hintz and Chris Taylor.
Jumping off of Rep. Hintz's and Rep. Taylor's points, a big reason the next budget will be so "rough" is because of those prior cuts to education.
Those cuts are back in the news this week, as the Wisconsin State Journal wrote an article discussing the 70-80 staff positions that are slated to be cut in Madison schools, one year after that same district cut 100 positions. These possible cuts also come 10 months after Madison voters passed a $41 million referendum just to keep up with maintenance and needed building improvements.
Oh, and the average Wisconsin homeowner is seeing his/her property taxes are going up, with additional local sales taxes possibly being stacked on top of that (well, it's either that or the roads fall apart). And this dimwit is thinking he can get his massive campaign debt retired in the next year as he laughs grifts his way through fundraisers, including one on Thursday at the ritzy Madison Club downtown?
Oh, and need we mention that the John Doe corruption investigation into Walker and the puppetmasters of the Wisconsin GOP is heading to the U.S. Supreme Court? This is despite the bought off Wisconsin Supreme Court trying to disrupt the prosecutors of this case every step of the way, with the latest example coming this weekend.
In a 4-1 unsigned decision, the state's high court found that Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and two other Democratic DAs, Ismael Ozanne of Dane County and Larry Nelson of Iowa County, cannot share sealed documents with three outside counsels.
The three private attorneys in question work for the firm Reed Smith LLP, which handled the U.S. Supreme Court case, Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. That decision dealt with whether state supreme court justices could sit on cases involving major political benefactors.
A similar issue is at play in Wisconsin. The appeal attempt to the U.S. Supreme Court by the DAs is likely to hinge on whether Justices Michael Gableman and David Prosser should have ruled on the investigation because their campaigns benefited from heavy spending by groups that were caught up in the probe.
The Reed Smith attorneys had been willing to represent the prosecutors for free.
Flint, Michigan may be getting the most recent attention due to its GOP-run state government allowing its citizens to be poisoned (and rightfully so). But Wisconsin is perhaps the best/worst example of how GOP policies at the state level have caused great injury, not only in its fiscal and economic health, but also in its quality of life. Oh, and is Wisconsin thinking of similar Flint-style privatization of water systems? You bet they're trying to privatize water systems!
So if the Democrats in this state and in the nation want to score some points this week, maybe they should remind the nation just how bad things have become in GOP-run Wisconsin, and why no other place should be subjected to such a reign of error. And the three issues mentioned above merely scratch the surface, as there is much, much more to look into, if one cares to.