Walker Borrows Massively for Sham Budget Fix

When Tom Barrett, in the lead-up to Scott Walker's June 5th recall election stated Barrett says that Walker used a "credit card" to "balance state budget", pushing borrowing costs into the future, he was correct.  Walker and Wisconsin's media echo-chamber falsely trumpet reckless borrowing as somehow being the answer to deficit spending -- a shameless lie -- borrowing longer-term to misrepresent short-term problems as solved is dishonest.

But a new report shows that Walker's fiscal slight-of-hand is even worse than what Barrett knew.


The legislative audit bureau released a report on the financial audit of the State of Wisconsin as of and for the fiscal year (FY) ended June 30, 2012 92 page .pdf).  Not surprisingly, the report shows, in terms of the long-term debt:

As shown on page 110, the State’s long-term debt issued for general government operations was $11.0 billion as of June 30, 2012, which is an increase of $453.3 million since June 30, 2011.

That's almost one-half billion dollars or an increase in one fiscal year that approaches 5%.  Because this needs to be repaid with interests, costs not included in the report's analysis, the actual cost to taxpayers for Walker's pretend-to-fix-the-budget shenanigans are actually hundreds of millions of dollars more.

Walker continues to undermine Wisconsin's economy and prospects for job growth -- this isn't a mistake on his-part.  This is his mode of operations -- gin up a crisis and then exploit it as if there were no alternatives.  In fact, we could entirely avoid the economic disasters he creates.

And we could fix all of our economic issues like California did -- increasing revenues with a temporary tax surcharge.  Please contact your legislatures and, if you dare, Walker himself to let him know that:

1.  We do not have to govern by crisis
2. A rational solution to our economic problems would be to ask more from those that benefit most from a growing economy.