How's that Tea Party Economics working for you?

It's been a year now since Tea Party quislings swept into governors' offices across the country. They promised to shrink government in order to unleash the powers of free enterprise.

Once elected, that isn't exactly what happened. They shrunk funding for education, pensions and health care. But their governments stayed pretty much the same size. We assume their cronies got what working families didn't.

Anyhoo, we thought we'd take a look at how well the Tea Party playbook worked out. Did austerity for the 99 percent coupled with tax breaks and giveaways to the 1 percent improve their states' economies?

Let's start with Maine, which has possibly the wingnuttiest governor in the country. Paul LePage, you'll recall, took down a mural depicting labor history in Maine at the state's Department of Labor. He also followed the Tea Party recipe for economic success. According to the Bangor Daily News:

...the state lost more jobs per capita in 2011 than every other state in the nation, shedding 7,200 jobs...

Whoops.

Well, then let's look at the second most wingnutty governor: Wisconsin's Koch whore Scott Walker. He campaigned on a promise of creating 250,000 jobs. If you listen to Walker now, his attacks on working families "reforms" are working and he's created jobs. But then you have to remember that 69 percent of what comes out of Scott Walker's mouth is a lie, so you need to dig a little deeper.

According to Express Milwaukee,

Jobs have been lost in each month since Walker's budget has been in effect.

...Even worse, Walker's Wisconsin is moving in the opposite direction as the rest of the country. While the United States as a whole has been adding jobs for 22 months as part of the broader national recovery, Wisconsin is the only state to have shed jobs in each of the past six months.

So much for Scotty Boy. How about a Tea Party governor with business experience, like Florida's Pink Slip Rick Scott?

Oh wait, the business experience involved ripping off the government.

Scott, however, did promise to create 700,000 jobs as governor.

Here's what he's done, according to The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting:

The jobless rate is falling because so many Floridians have stopped looking for work that they aren’t being counted anymore.

Steep cuts in state spending have further squeezed the poor and unemployed, and in turn, the municipalities in which they live.

The majority of new jobs are in the lowest-paying sectors.

Wages have fallen for the poorest workers.

Poverty has increased.

Florida has one of the highest populations of uninsured in the country.

Oh, and when Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts? He ranked 47th out of 50 governors in job creation.

Time for a new playbook.