Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has made little progress fulfilling a campaign promise to create 250,000 jobs over four years, making the pledge that was a key to getting him elected last year a potentially significant hurdle as he fights off recall efforts.
The new governor wasn’t expected to have to defend his jobs promise so soon. But after successfully pushing through a law that effectively ended collective bargaining rights for most public workers and made Wisconsin the epicenter of a nationwide fight over union rights, Walker was targeted for recall.
During an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Walker said he doesn’t regret making the promise.
“If you don’t have an aggressive goal, you’re going to fall short,” Walker said.
Still, Walker has a long way to go. His own Department of Revenue predicted in October that based on the latest forecasts, about 136,000 jobs would be added by 2015. But at the current pace, only 71,000 jobs would be created in four years.
Walker was the only gubernatorial candidate in last year’s race to promise a specific number of news jobs, with no wiggle room, and he brashly repeated the pledge after winning.
“I want my Cabinet secretaries to have branded across their heads, `250,000 jobs,'” Walker said at a December 2010 meeting of the Dairy Business Association. “I want them to know their job is on the line because my job is on the line to create 250,000 jobs in the private sector.”
Rep. Peter Barca, the ranking Democrat in the Wisconsin Assembly, said voters assumed Walker had a solid plan to deliver.
“But obviously his plan is not working,” Barca said.
Wisconsin has lost nearly 15,000 jobs since Walker’s budget took effect in July and had the highest job loss of any state in November, according to federal data. Over the same time period, more than 100,000 jobs were created nationally during each of the past five months.
Steven Deller, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of agriculture and applied economics, predicted that the funding cuts included in Walker’s current two-year budget will result in 20,000 job losses.
