Back in 2006, Scott "I never personally attack" Walker called Jim Doyle a "liar" for saying in his State of the State address that the budget was balanced. Walker argued that Doyle's numbers were not done according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and that if they would have been there would be a deficit.
Walker promised that when he became governor, he would only use GAAP accounting methods. Walker made this promise in both his 2006 and 2010 run for governor. Of course Walker lied and has continued to use the same accounting method as Doyle used.
If Wisconsin used Walker's promised GAAP method, our current state budget would not be balanced and we would be three billion short.
Humorously, the Walker administration has tried to play both sides of the fence. They wrote to the feds and said they would have to throw 53,000 people off of Medicaid because they had a "budget deficit." And, of course to everyone else they've bragged about having a balanced budget. Rep. Jon Richards explains:
Huebsch’s letter said the deficit was based on Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), a budgeting method the state currently does not use to balance its books, but Scott Walker promised to use as a candidate for governor. Using this method, Walker’s budget would have a $3 billion deficit by June 30, 2013, according to administration budget documents. In contrast, the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau says Walker’s budget is balanced based on the accounting principles the state uses for budget purposes, as is required by state law.
Walker’s inconsistency on what constitutes a balanced budget is not new. As a candidate for governor in 2010, Walker pledged to balance every budget state budget using GAAP—a promise he broke. Likewise, in his failed bid for governor in 2006, Walker called then-Gov. Jim Doyle a “world champion liar” for saying his budget was balanced, when by GAAP standards it was not. Attached is a LFB memo to Rep. Richards discussing Huebsch’s letter.