In Friday's debate, Scott Walker said Wisconsin's employment rate was the lowest in six year. Was that a gaffe or a Freudian slip?
October 12, 2014

In his closing remarks during Friday night's debate against Mary Burke, Scott Walker made the following statement (starting about the 23 second mark):

"You know, a lot has changed over the past four years. Think about it, we have the lowest employment rate we've had, well, since almost six years ago."

My, my, isn't that quite the gaffe?

It was his second gaffe of the night when it comes to his dismal record on job creation.

Karoli already covered his first gaffe, when Walker claimed that Wisconsin did not have a jobs problem, it had "a work problem."

I won't vouch for the accuracy of Walker's claim of the employment numbers being the lowest in six years, but they are definitely not where they should be. Not even done with his first year, Walker's record in creating jobs was worse than if he did nothing at all.

The fact that Wisconsin started hemorrhaging jobs as soon as Walker's policies - most notably, Act 10, Walker's attack on public sector workers - took effect was noted by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics:

wis_job_growth_graph

Even the numbers from Walker's own Department of Workforce Development shows that Walker's policies put the state's job numbers in a tailspin:

2011_jobs_chart

As Walker continued to siphon more and more money out of the state's economy to give to his wealthy campaign donors, the trend only got worse. People no longer had money to spend on niceties such as going out to eat or seeing a movie. This led to more lay offs and less money circulating.

Walker apologists are sure to claim that what Walker said was just a gaffe and would point to reports saying that Wisconsin's jobless rate is down to 5.8%.

All that number means is that Walker is a manipulative weasel.

Along with his other ALEC-driven policies, Walker and his Teapublican allies in the state legislature set about to screw with the unemployed.

Even though new unemployment claims were at an all time high, Walker understaffed the call center for unemployment compensation. Hey, if people can't get through, they can't file claims and thus they can't be counted as unemployed.

Then Walker and friends put an even tighter squeeze on the unemployed. They passed changes to the rules to make it harder to get unemployment compensation, wait up to six weeks for the first check if one was approved and made it harder to keep receiving benefits. Showing what cowards they are, they made these changes without so much as a public hearing.

Nothing like kicking people when they're down.

Now it's time for Wisconsin voters to kick him down and out.

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