Scott Walker Big on Slogans, So-So on Jobs

Scott Walker loves talking about his “powerful” job-creating policies. “The very first day I was elected, I put up a sign that said, ‘Wisconsin is open for business,’” Walker said at a US Chamber of Commerce summit yesterday, waving a bumper sticker bearing the same message. There’s just one problem, writes Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: Wisconsin’s only added 20,300 jobs this year—an increase of 0.7% in its workforce. “Sorry, governor, but that’s not very powerful.”

“This doesn’t mean Walker’s policies have failed,” Milbank admits, because benefits could take a while to materialize. “But it does suggest that conservatives criticizing the Obama administration’s handling of the economy don’t have a silver bullet of their own.” Indeed, CEOs at yesterday’s summit seemed to be calling for more government spending, urging states to be “laboratories of democracy.” None of it seemed to sit well with Walker, “whose tenure has made Wisconsin more of a laboratory of theocracy.” (More Scott Walker stories.)