MU Law Wisconsin head-to-heads:
Hillary 47.1, Trump 36.6
Hillary 44.2, Cruz 44.2
Kasich 48.1, Hillary 39.2
What's sad is we will throw it all away by nominating Trump.
Trump is such a walking, talking bastion of thuggish disinformation and incoherence that even the virulently anti-Walker Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel had to to call him on his lies in front of a typical crowd of loutish yahoos in Janesville yesterday:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/donald-trump-numbers-aimed-at-scott-walker-miss-mark-b99697136z1-373987221.htmlDonald Trump Numbers Aimed at Scott Walker Miss Mark By Jason Stein of the Journal Sentinel
Hacking away at Gov. Scott Walker's record in Wisconsin Tuesday, real estate mogul Donald Trump swung a list of impressive statistics from "the big book."
But it turns out the billionaire presidential candidates's big book has some numbers that are misleading or just wrong.
Trump recited his list in Janesville Tuesday afternoon as he lambasted Walker, who endorsed rival and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas that morning in Wisconsin's April 5 GOP presidential primary.
"It's like devastating. By the summer of 2015 Wisconsin was facing a $2.2 billion two-year budget deficit. That's terrible. By the way these are from books — this isn't Trump — this is out of books," Trump said. "Total state debt is $45 billion, now maybe somebody is going to tell me that's wrong but again — $45 billion is very high, one of the higher ones."
That would be a crushingly high debt state — if it were true.The Wisconsin Legislature's nonpartisan budget office recently put out numbers on Wisconsin's total debt from all loans —from general obligation bonds and road bonds to short-term loans known as commercial paper. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau, Wisconsin's equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office, puts the state debt as of December 2015 at $14.1 billion, or less than one-third of what Trump said.
That's up about $860 million, or 6.5%, from the $13.2 billion where it stood in December 2010 just before Walker took office.
Trump's campaign had no immediate comment on who publishes his "big book," but it appears that the billionaire was referring to all state and local debt in Wisconsin. The U.S. Census Bureau had total state and local debt in 2013 at $44.4 billion, a figure which includes everything from cities and counties to schools districts and other entities with their own elected officials who are not under Walker's direct control.
Trump is almost right on the $2.2 billion — the state did face a such a shortfall in the fall of 2014 and spring of 2015. But that wasn't a deficit — Wisconsin's constitution doesn't allow the state to actually spend more than it takes in.The state was in danger of doing that a year ago, because state revenue at one point was projected to fall $2.2 billion short of what state agencies wanted to spend over the 2015-'17 budget. But since the state can't actually run such a deficit, Walker and GOP lawmakers did what they are required to do and avoided a deficit through spending cuts such as a $250 million hit to the University of Wisconsin System.
With the crowd in Janesville cheering him on, Trump gave more numbers Tuesday:
"20,000 fewer in the labor force in Wisconsin than seven years ago even though the population has grown by 100,000...
Unemployment rate well they say — that can't be possible...20%, that can't be possible," Trump said, turning to the crowd. "What? Is it at 20%? Effective or regular? I mean just — effective unemployment rate at 20%, hey this is out of the big book."
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is checking on these numbers,
but the state's ordinary unemployment rate was at 4.6% as of February, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. There can be ways of figuring unemployment, such as adding in people who have given up looking for jobs, that can result in it being higher. But four times higher would be a lot.
Lastly, Trump said that Wisconsin has "800,000 food stamp recipients." There, he's in the ballpark.
The state had 741,000 FoodShare recipients as of January 2016, according to the state Department of Health Services. The state hit a high of 862,000 people in May 2013.
