Scott Walker: Clinton fights for special interests; I will fight for your interests

You can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. Hillary Clinton is no exception.

Her presidential campaign has been defined by closed-door meetings and carefully choreographed events designed to shield her from the same Americans she is asking for votes. If Iowans were hoping for something different during Clinton’s most recent visit to the Hawkeye state, they will be sorely disappointed.

Much of Clinton’s time was spent in meetings with union bosses. The fact that Clinton is shunning everyday Iowans in favor of big-labor special interests sends a clear message about where her true loyalties lie.

For Iowans, my campaign offers a very different vision. While Clinton is dead-set on defending and enabling the special interests that have driven our nation’s capital to the point of dysfunction, we’re focused on fixing the broken system these forces created. We’re bringing new and bold leadership from outside of Washington that takes power away from big government bureaucrats and union bosses and puts it back where it belongs: in the hands of hard-working Americans.

When I became governor of Wisconsin, we inherited a $3.6 billion deficit. The rainy day fund was nearly drained and special interests were in charge at the state and local levels. We had a lot of work to do. Undoing the damage required bold action, so we started by taking on one of the biggest special interests contributing to the state’s problems: public-sector unions.

For years, big government union bosses had the upper hand, negotiating for — and getting — benefits the taxpayers couldn’t afford. As a result the state was in dire financial straits. We started Wisconsin’s turnaround by passing common-sense reforms that required public employees to make reasonable contributions to their health care and retirement benefits and ended taxpayer-funded collection of union dues.

Liberal union bosses, like those Clinton is meeting with this weekend, fought our reforms tooth and nail, organizing 100,000 protesters to occupy our state capitol grounds. Unintimidated by their attacks and protests, we took them on and we won.

On behalf of Wisconsin students and teachers, we began repairing a broken system that rewarded tenure and seniority over teacher performance. Under the reforms we enacted, the old rules are now in the history books.

Our policies are working. Four years later and graduation rates are up, third grade reading scores are higher and Wisconsin’s ACT scores are now second best in the country.

But we didn’t stop there. Time and again, we fought and won for hard-working taxpayers, passing a host of reforms that shook the status quo to its core and got our state moving in the right direction again.

We cut spending and transformed the deficit into a surplus while reducing taxes. We replenished the state’s rainy day fund, which is now 165 times bigger than when I first took office. We cut taxes by $2 billion and lowered the burden on individuals and employers so they could save and invest more of their hard-earned money. We enacted pro-jobs and pro-growth legislation, including lawsuit reform and regulatory reform.

Today, with these and other reforms, Wisconsin is a much better place. We created a brighter future in our state using a strategy that’s rare in politics: We put taxpayers’ interests ahead of special interests.

We can do the same in our nation’s capital. And my record of putting hard-working taxpayers first stands in clear contrast to Clinton’s record.

Now, more than ever, we need a president who will actually fix the dysfunction in Washington by taking on the groups contributing to it. That’s something to think about as Hillary Clinton caters to special interests instead of meeting with everyday Iowans.

SCOTT WALKER, a Republican, is the governor of Wisconsin and a candidate for president. Contact: scottwalker.com