States’ rights advocates like to claim that each of the fifty states is like a laboratory, where politicians get to test their theories. If you agree with this laboratory idea, teabaggers are in some real trouble when it comes to job creation:
It seems that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) might have been overreaching when he promised to create 250,000 new jobs in his first term. While Walker has spent the last twelve months slashing state budgets and busting unions, Wisconsinites have been dealing with the consequences. New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that Walker’s state saw the largest decrease in jobs over the last year, dropping nearly a full percentage point
That means Walker is responsible for “the largest over-the-year percentage decrease” in the United States last year. Combine that with Mitt Romney’s abysmal record as a job creator—Massachusetts was 47th in job creation in the US while he was governor—and it looks like those Republican job creation talking points might not be as sound as conservatives would like to believe. Cutting budgets and kneecapping unions so that corporations and the wealthy can pull in ever-greater profits, it turns out, don’t make for an infallible job-creating engine.