MADISON, Wis. — One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross released the following statements regarding the latest failure from Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled legislature: a total job loss of 2,300 from July to August and the unemployment rate rising to 7.9 percent. The news comes after Walker signed into law $2.3 billion in new tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy, while gutting public and higher education and health care, as well as stripping 175,000 workers of their rights.

“Another month, another rise in the unemployment rate under Gov. Scott Walker. Given that the Republican legislature gave Gov. Walker all the tax breaks for corporations, all the tax breaks for the wealthy, all the power grabs and privatization and all the dismantling of voter rights and workers’ rights he demanded, it is time for them to admit their way is a failure. Complete and total. We need to immediately scrap what they have done, erase it from the statutes and invest in the people of Wisconsin so that the people of Wisconsin have a fighting chance at undoing the historic economic damage the corporate menace which put Scott Walker into the Governor’s mansion caused. If Gov. Walker’s schemes were going to work, we would have seen some glimmer of hope by now as we pass nine months of this administration.”

Gov. Walker signed over $100 million in new tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy in January in addition to the massive breaks he signed in the state budget. The state’s unemployment rate had been holding steady or falling for much of the two years preceding his taking office.