Scott Walker has a packed presidential campaign calendar already, with two trips out of state this weekend to raise money from the Koch brothers in California and court far-right caucus voters in Iowa, and now the governor is planning at least two trips out of the country this year alone – more than in his entire first term in office.
Scott Walker is treading a familiar path having the taxpayers foot the bill for self-promoting campaign trips. When he was county executive, he used county funds to travel Wisconsin on the premise that he was promoting Milwaukee, while in reality, documents disclosed from the first of two criminal corruption probes into Walker and his staff show these taxpayer-funded trips were nothing more than an opportunity to promote Walker’s campaign for governor.
Now Walker is reaching back into his old bag of tricks to have the state pay to burnish his paper-thin resume on foreign matters – because, unfortunately for Scott Walker, gutting worker’s rights in Wisconsin doesn’t constitute foreign policy experience.
With a trip to China already done in 2013, Walker this week announced trips to the United Kingdom, Israel, and possibly Germany too.
Why the sudden rush to go on more taxpayer-funded foreign trips in one year than he went on in his entire first term?
“It’s no wonder with Scott Walker’s weekly out of state presidential campaign fundraising travel and now his taxpayer-funded foreign photo-ops that Wisconsin continues to lag in job growth, wage growth, and revenue,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said Thursday. “With some of the worst job growth and income growth numbers of any state in the county during his time in office, the worst fiscal reserves of any state in the country, a $2.2 billion deficit and new revenue numbers from December that show tax revenues lagging from last year, is this really the time Scott Walker should be ignoring Wisconsin?”
