A Walker Run for President is Ridiculous! Media needs to focus on his record, his divisive agenda.

The genius of Scott Walker; getting people to like him, even when they’re being led down the rabbit of hole of partisan lies and huge debt. He’s protecting the taxpayer don’t cha know. They just love that line.

Below is the truth about a mess that will end up becoming a Democratic governor or legislature's problem to solve. You know the routine; Democrats will solve the problem, but then be blamed for raising taxes, fees and whatever else to pay off the debt, getting Republicans elected. It’s one vicious cycle of stupidity. I have another post featuring a story from WPT's Here and Now that blows the lid of the "kick the can down the road" Walker administration's lousy spend and borrow agenda.

I apologize to the blog who originally discovered this story and brought it to my attention. This is just a summary from UrbanMilwaukee:

A report by the non-partisan Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance does an analysis using generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, to look at the overall state deficit. Walker cut it from $2.99 billion to $2.21 billion in 2012 and by this summer that is expected to drop to $2.06 billion.

But under the governor’s new budget, that figure is expected to increase to $2.36 billion by 2014 and $2.64 billion by 2015.  Meanwhile he wants to greatly increase bonded debt. WisTax noted he is asking to issue an additional $2.1 billion in bonds, equal to 16% of all outstanding state debt.

Perhaps most alarming is Walker’s approach to funding transportation, which could leave the transportation fund so in debt that 25 cents of every dollar would be spent on debt service by 2023, as my colleague Dave Reid has reported. A report from the bipartisan Transportation Finance & Policy Commission, alarmed by the growing transportation fund deficit, had recommended increasing the gas tax, which hasn’t been hiked since 2006, and comes nowhere near paying for the cost of roads in Wisconsin. Todd Berry, executive director of the taxpayers alliance. notes. “I think inevitably Wisconsin will have some kind of quasi-toll tax. Transportation in other states is becoming very much like a utility where you are metered and sent a bill.” The income tax cut, he notes, is a key contributor to dissipating the progress Walker had made in reducing the state’s GAAP deficit.

In the longterm, the apparent progress Walker made on the GAAP deficit may turn out be a small footnote to a longterm trend that suggests Wisconsin is underfunded and under-taxed. 

The WisTax report doesn’t go back to 1999 but does show the state debt has risen from $5.8 billion in 2002 to $13.6 billion in 2013, and that will jump to $15.7 billion if Walker’s budget is approved in this regard.

From a GAAP analysis, the WisTax report noted, Wisconsin had the third-highest deficit in 2011, trailing only California ($19.9) million and Illinois ($8.1 million).