Walker throws the bull to the folks up in Ashland

When he’s not flying off to New York City to hang with hedge funders in an attempt to retire his campaign debt, our Fair Governor continues to take taxpayer-funded trips around the state to pitch his latest ideas in his invite-only “listening sessions.”

One of those sessions was in Ashland yesterday, and included these claims from Governor Walker.

“For local and state governments, you have had about five million dollars in savings, property and income taxes are lower than they were five years ago,” he said. “We have empowered schools and local governments to do things they have only dreamed of.

“Going forward though, even though we gave incredible flexibilities for schools and local government, in this budget I have committed all of the tens of millions of dollars we are likely to save from how we reform and administer our health insurance for state employees, that will all be going to more funding for public education in the state. We gave them flexibility, they made changes, they made improvements now we are going to continue to build a positive system for our schools in the state.”

Lot of bullshit to unpack there.

1. “Five million” in savings, Governor? Compared to the $1 billion+ in lowered state funding for K-12 public education and lots more in state aid cuts to local governments, that doesn’t seem like much of a fair trade. I’m going to guess Gov Dropout misspoke and was trying to pull a number “$5 billion in savings” (a number that comes straight from his backside), but even then, it seems evident that the Act 10 “tools” have not offset the state aid cuts over the last 6 years.

2. Property and income taxes are lower? Not after the last year of school referendums they won’t be (if they were ever lower to begin with). And now with property values rising in most places (Thanks Federal Reserve! Thanks Obama!), that’s a second reason I’m betting your property tax bill won’t be lower when you get it in the next week or so.

As for income taxes being lower- gee, thanks for the $5 a week in pizza savings, Gov! And for people that have been screwed over by having the value of the Homestead Credit and Wisconsin EITC diminished since 2011, they have likely seen little tax savings at all.

3. “I have committed all of the tens of millions of dollars we are likely to save from how we reform and administer our health insurance for state employees, that will all be going to more funding for public education in the state.” WHOA! How do we know any changes to state employee health insurance will save a dime when we don’t even know what the new plan will be? And given the job loss and insurance disruptions that would occur from such a move, and the moves that may happen from the GOP wack jobs in DC, it seems more likely that this will hurt the state’s bottom line more than it’ll help it (let alone how it’ll mess up the lives of hundreds of thousands of state employees and their families).

It's classic Walker/WisGOP “wing a prayer” talk, where they throw magic savings or revenue plans into the budget, get the numbers to add up with magic asterisks, and then worry about the shortfalls later on. And given the disappointing jobs numbers in the state, don’t count on some kind of revenue surprise changing that equation in the upcoming budget.

But that’s not even the biggest pile of garbage Walker tried to dump on the invited crowd of GOP officials and campaign contributors people at the Ashland listening session. This was.

Walker confirmed that he has been in touch with the Trump transition team, and said he has been offered various positions four different times and that he has declined every time.

“I’ve told them all that I like being Governor of Wisconsin,” he said.

Typical of little man Walker- always trying to puff himself up with tall tales and lies about his own importance. It’s more likely the Trump people rebuffing HIM from skipping out of Wisconsin before the wobbly state budget and economy crashes down for good.

But if Trump and Walker have proved anything in recent years, it’s that the ability to lie with a straight face and blow smoke up people’s backsides gets rewarded by enough rubes to make a good living. So they may as well try to keep up the con as long as they can keep the paychecks rolling in.