11.) ISIS/Syria
At the Conservative Action Conference on February 26, 2015, Governor Scott Walker said: "If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world." Walker was referring to the estimated 100,000 Wisconsin residents who assembled at the state capitol to protest Walker's crippling of collective bargaining rights for public sector union members. Walker was explicitly equating the protesters in Wisconsin with the ISIS insurgency movement in the Middle East. Walker later tried to spin that statement into an illustration of how he would handle a tough situation. The problem with that approach is that you can't unring a bell. There is an interesting parallel with how Walker handled the phone call from a hoaxer pretending to be Charles Koch. The hoaxer recommended that Walker infiltrate his own people into the massed protesters to cause chaos. Walker didn't take the opportunity to defend the right of the people to peacefully protest; he merely said he had other ways to handle it.
On February 1, 2015, appearing on ABC's program, This Week. Walker stated he would not rule out deploying U.S. soldiers to fight ISIS -- Walker has made a similar statement in regard to the civil war in Syria. Walker just said we must be "prepared." He didn't give any indication of the number of troops, the timelines involved, nor the urgency of taking the action. Other than these few unspecific statements, Governor Walker has not made conflict in the Middle East a major issue in his campaign.
12.) Air Traffic Controllers' Flap
Governor Scott Walker has made the claim that Ronald Reagan's take down of the air traffic controller's union was one of the greatest foreign policy successes in history. His claim is that the toughness he displayed through that action impressed the leaders of the Soviet Union that they must began to take Reagan seriously. Walker further claimed that there were documents that would prove the great impact the Reagan action had. The archivist of Soviet documents at Georgetown University has said that no such documents exist; also, Jack Matlock, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union at the time, has labeled Walker's claim as "nonsense." Reagan's disbanding of the air traffic controller's union is widely seen as a major blow against organized labor in the United States, not as a major foreign policy success.
13.) Iranian Nuclear Development Deal
At the first debate of GOP presidential candidates, Scott Walker said one of the first actions he would take would be to kill the nuclear development deal with Iran. He therefore revealed himself to be a leader who doesn't avail himself of informed input before making such a major decision. A reflective leader would have said that he/she would seek a wide array of informed opinion before making such a decision. Given that renegotiation is highly unlikely to work and harsher sanctions imposed by the U.S. are also highly unlikely to be followed by other nations, military action would become the only viable option.
14.) President Obama's Stimulus Spending
Governor Scott Walker has portrayed himself as "one of the few elected officials in the country to not submit a wish list of projects from the federal stimulus funds." The stimulus being referred to is in the Americans Recovery and Reinvestment Act. When, however, the Milwaukee County Board requested some funding, Walker, as the county executive, submitted his own wish list of projects to be funded by the national government.
15.) Budgetary Deficits/Tax Cuts
In his first state budget for 2011-13, Governor Scott Walker proposed tax cuts for corporations,businesses, manufacturers and investors, among other groups. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated the value of the cuts as $2.33 billion over ten years.
In an analysis of the latest Wisconsin state budget, the Chicago Tribune outlined how the current $2 billion deficit would be handled. Revenues are expected to exceed sending by $161 million in the next year and fall short by $30 million in the second year. State agencies must find $1 billion in unspecified cuts and revenues must grow by four percent in each of the next two years. The Tribune took a rather uncritical look at the budgetary assumptions; however, it should have looked at what happened to the assumptions in the 2014 tax cut.
In March 2014, Governor Walker signed a $541 tax cut bill -- the third one in the previous year -- to cut taxes on property and families. The new law eliminated all state income taxes for manufacturers in the state.The expectation was that growing tax collections would give the state a $1 billion surplus in June 2015. Although tax rates were cut across the board, the average taxpayer was projected to get a cut of $46 in income taxes ad a property tax decrease of $131. These very modest tax cuts would hardly make a dent in the average family's standard of living.
Mary Burke, then the state commerce secretary and later the Democratic candidate for governor, claimed that the tax cuts would mean a loss of income to 114,000 Wisconsin families. The reason for this was that the companion cut in the Earned Income tax Credit would exceed the reduction in the income tax. PoliticalFact Wisconsin analysed the Burke claim and rated it half-true. Thus, a lot of families would be a little poorer off as a result of the tax changes.
Earlier this year, Governor Walker's own financial advisers put the state deficit at $2.2 billion. Jon Peacock of the Wisconsin Budget Project agrees. He says that Walker has made a "self-inflicted wound," through massive tax giveaways and a struggling economy. The point to be made here is that since budget projections made in the 2014 tax cut have proved to be far off the mark, why should budget and deficit projections made in 2015 for the next two years, be given much credence?
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