Promises. They are tricky little buggers (pardon my English) in the world of politics. Readily made and easily forgotten; just last week I was talking to my dad about Gov.-elect Scott Walker. He said to me, “You know what, I remember every promise politicians make. I remember Al Gore and George W. Bush’s promises about what they would do with the budget surplus.” It struck me as a rather reasonable approach to politics that we as citizens consistently fail to adhere to. While I could talk at length about the seeming irrational connections the public makes between promises and execution, it seems more prudent to answer a simple question, who is Scott Walker?
So, I pulled up his website to get an in-depth look at what he’s promising.
Ladies you may be interested to know if you happen to be raped, Walker cares more about a potential zygote than he does about you. To Walker, “government has no higher purpose than protecting its citizens,” specifically the “unborn” – i.e. Scott Walker promises to control your uterus.
To all the farmers out there, Walker is promising something actually beneficial, so you might want to jot this down. He promises to “eliminate the ‘gotcha mentality’ of government regulators.” How he will do this, or even what the hell it means are questions I can’t answer, but he promised, so maybe no more taxes? Oh, he also promises to repeal the “Death Tax,” which first of all is actually called the Estate Tax, and second of all he has no control over since it is a federal law and lastly only affects estates valued at over $3.5 million. Starting to sound a little hollow with the promises, Scott. Perhaps you can play ball on a different court.
Education provides such a court, where at least what I found seemed to resonate as valuable. Evidently 33 percent of Wisconsin fourth graders cannot currently read at a basic level, Walker promises to change this (That is a ridiculous number; seriously parents, I’m looking at you on that one). His educational reform promises include grading everybody from teachers to staff to schools as a whole. Good ideas and a valuable direction, just one quick question, where is the money for all this “government regulation” coming from? Hard to say, surely “government spending reform” will have the answers.
Well, not exactly the “answers,” Walker is quick to point out that we have a $6 billion deficit as a state, and even quicker to attack Doyle for raising taxes to cover it. Walker’s answer is to “start the state budget at zero” which sounds cool, but is a generally meaningless statement. Because the only way you start or finish at zero is clearly to cut some programs, and while he continues throwing jibes at lobbyists and “blind percentage increases” in spending he misses the point. In reality, the increases made in the last year were not blind and were not irrelevant.
That education system so in need of reform received a $201 million increase (2.9 percent) for elementary and secondary education. This university received $15 million so it can continue to attract the finest faculty in the world. Hard to pair a promise to improve education with cutting some of this aid, unless the promise is to do more with less. Sounds great, but it comes off more as one of those sounds-to-good-to-be-true sort of things. But that is what Walker told the Board of Regents, saying to do more with less they needed to be more creative and innovative to get the most out of limited resources.
Not that Walker holds himself up to such high standards. If his promises are any indication, Walker plans to follow in the footsteps of the least creative politicians: Promise everything, deliver nothing.
Wisconsin can look forward to funding cuts in crucial areas of infrastructure, sprinkled with a refusal of women’s rights and topped with empty fear-raising position taking. But don’t take my word for it; go find out what Walker is really promising. Read it for yourself, and remember, because the next election will come, and promises turn to results. So take the time Wisconsin, answer the question of who Scott Walker is and let’s see what promises really mean.
John Waters ([email protected]) is a junior intending to major in journalism.
