Scott Walker is running for president hardened by four years of fighting for fiscal pragmatism and public sector reform as governor of Wisconsin. Those bruising battles, and his victories in them, underscore nearly every position he has staked out on the road he hopes will take him to the White House.
He touts legislative accomplishments in a blue state, his defeat of militantly hostile unions, and his reversal of the state's budget deficit. Walker slashed wasteful spending by forming a special commission tasked with rooting out abuse, and forced the state government to publish its expenditures online.
Candidates often talk about waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government. But Walker's promotion of "big, bold reforms" during his gubernatorial tenure suggests that fixing Washington's waste would be high on his presidential agenda, and that he'd tackle it the same way he did in Wisconsin.
Examiner: What do you see as the most wasteful use of taxpayer dollars in the federal government today?
Walker: I don't know if there is any one thing. I think if you look across the spectrum, certainly, if you look at a lot of these individual earmarks over the years, they are pretty amazingly wasteful. But it's not just the item-by-item, it's where's the best use of those dollars? My belief, my push, my thought is about pushing money from Washington back to the states and even, in some cases, back to local governments.
Shift power to states
I'd do it for everything from Medicaid to transportation, workforce development, environmental protection, education. I think a fair amount of the waste is not just those areas, but the fact that they could be done in a way that is much more effective and efficient and definitely more accountable at the state and the local level. That's one of the things that I am going to try to push for in the first hundred days: the particulars, that kind of a fundamental reform shift.
Examiner: You promoted open government legislation in Wisconsin. What would you do to promote transparency at the federal level?
Examiner: A couple of different things. One part I just mentioned, but the more you shift some of these responsibilities that aren't the appropriate role of the federal government to the states and local governments, the more you can hone in on the things that the federal government appropriately does. And I've been pleased, both at the county level and the county executive and now as a governor as well, to put expenditures online so that any citizen can see what the federal government is spending money on.
Having a federal government that, instead of being too big to fail, is small enough to succeed would allow people to be able to track where their dollars are being spent, and hold federal officials accountable for it.
Examiner: How would you balance the need to streamline the federal government's bureaucracy with the fact that doing so would inevitably cut government jobs?
Walker: In two parts. One, by shifting money and power back to the states, that wouldn't necessarily be a reduction in jobs. It would be a shift to the jobs at the state and local level, as opposed to the concentration in Washington. We found last year that reports said six of the top 10 wealthiest counties in America were in or around Washington, D.C., which shows kind of a disconnect. I think the president and people like Hillary Clinton think you grow the economy by growing Washington.
I think most of us believe our cities and towns and people create jobs, not the government. But the other part is by having, again, a government that instead of being too big to fail is small enough to succeed. That's really putting not only power, but money and resources, back in the hands of the American people, and I think they're better off investing those dollars in ways that'll improve the economy, and create more jobs and higher wages ... And so I think in the end, if you do that particularly early on in the administration, it's going to have a positive impact on jobs and a positive impact on wages.
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/scott-walker-how-i-would-cut-washington-down-to-size/article/2568877
