In every quarter since the first Walker Budget took effect, Wisconsin has trailed the nation in total private job creation. The Republican plan is not working.

ASHLAND - Quarterly numbers released Wednesday show that Wisconsin lost 509 manufacturing jobs. For 19 straight quarters Wisconsin has trailed the nation in total private job creation. That’s every quarter since the first Walker Budget took effect in 2011.

My Republican colleagues keep saying that they have a plan for growing Wisconsin’s economy. They’ve been saying it for 6 years, but simply saying something doesn’t make it true.

Take the Manufacturing & Agriculture Tax Credit, which took effect in 2013. “What we’re trying to do is grow jobs, so it’s very much in keeping with that,” budget committee chair Senator Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) said. “Come to Wisconsin. Make things here,” said Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Burlington).

Earlier this summer I released a Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo exposing that 20,527 fewer manufacturing jobs were created in the three years after the Manufacturing Tax Credit took effect than in the three years before.

This week’s news is even worse for defenders of this shameless giveaway. We didn’t just create fewer jobs, we lost manufacturing jobs. And the credit is going to take $209 million of working taxpayers’ money next year and put it in the pockets of wealthy individuals who aren’t using it to create new jobs. 11 people earning more than $35 million will be handed $21.5 million of your money.

The plan isn’t working. It’s time to stop picking working taxpayers’ pockets for this entitlement for the already entitled. Handouts like the Manufacturing Tax Credit are preventing us from making investments in our roads and schools. Those investments would actually grow our economy.

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Janet Bewley (D-Ashland), State Senator Dist 25 was elected to the Senate in the fall of 2014 after serving two terms in the Wisconsin State Assembly. She is a member of the Senate’s Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges, Committee on Education, Committee on Insurance, Housing, and Trade and the Joint Legislative Audit Committee.
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