Late last week, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) spoke with conservative radio show host Jason Lewis about winning his union-busting fight. First, Lewis repeated the falsehood that Walker wasn’t against collective bargaining — a claim debunked by the Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo. Walker then went on to discuss the state’s union-busting bill and budget bill, proclaiming that his approach is “truly progressive”:
LEWIS: Whenever you get into these debates, it’s always management versus labor. Big guy versus little guy. This really isn’t the case. This is about the bailout culture versus market incentives. Nobody’s against collective bargaining, not Scott Walker, not Jason Lewis. […] This is just the latest bailout and what the labor unions want, what the Democrats want after the bailouts of everybody else during the last couple years, including business, is a bailout of big labor.
WALKER: That’s exactly right. […] We’ve actually done something remarkable. We have a credit-positive budget according to the national bond rating agencies because we dealt with our structural deficit in this budget, so that we’re not passing it on to our kids. But what they want is to do what they did two years ago, grab some more of the bailout stimulus money, use it for one-time money for a long-term fix can only make the problem worse. […] Truly, in the best sense of the word, what we’re doing is progressive. Other states are looking at massive cuts because of their deficits, but they’re looking to either make it up through layoffs or overall tax increases. That’s the wrong approach when you’ve got such a tough economy. We’re doing something that’s truly progressive and innovative.
Listen here:
If Walker is actually interested in a “truly progressive” approach, rather than simply employing Newspeak, cracking down on special interest tax-dodging alone would have balanced Wisconsin’s budget.