Perhaps it is a tough time to be Scott Walker, Wisconsin governor. Or, maybe not.

Maybe as long as one thinks they are changing the world, much as President Reagan did by firing the air traffic controllers, and as Walker compares himself favorably to Reagan today, maybe it is a fine day.

Breaking government unions is a tough job, but for a tough guy it is his “calling,” his mission, his path to greatness as he suggested in his all too funny mock phone conversation with one of the Koch brothers, his rich sponsors.

Now it should be noted that the new governor is an experienced union buster in his own right. Give credit where it is due.

Before his new job Walker served eight years as Milwaukee County Executive, and in that role in 2009 he busted his first union. It was the evil unionized security guards at the county courthouse who first tasted the righteous anger of Walker.

When Walker first attempted to fire these union thugs, he was rebuffed by other elected officials, those not fully aware of the innate damage these men and women caused to the great state of Wisconsin.

So Walker courageously changed his rhetoric, declared a fiscal crisis, and acted unilaterally to fire the security guards.

Success for Scott Walker in union busting, and done as a fiscal crisis…just as he would later declare a fiscal crisis in the state is requiring him to break unions there forever. Well, maybe not quite success.

As it turns out Walker exceeded his authority as county executive and offered no evidence in support of the claimed fiscal crisis. His firings were overturned and the union security guards were returned to their jobs. The entire fiasco cost the county about half a million dollars.

In an interesting sidebar, Walker had hired a United Kingdom company to privatize the security jobs. Yes, you read that correctly. He fired Wisconsin citizens to hire foreign workers to be paid with citizen tax dollars. The company he hired, Wackenhut, hired a head of courthouse security with a criminal record.

Now Walker wants to break the unions, once again claiming his all too familiar fiscal crisis. And, once again, Walker is wrong about the crisis.

In the current budget year the state budget was actually in balance … until Walker gave tax cuts to small business totaling $117 million and creating a deficit of almost exactly the same amount.

Walker did that to stimulate business growth in Wisconsin, at least in theory. But in fact Wisconsin has had one of the lowest business tax rates in the U.S.

As of 2007, and before this $117 million cut and a 2009 $187 million cut, Wisconsin was already ranked 35 in business taxation.

In fact, business taxes have comprised only about $630 million, or 5 percent of the state budget in Wisconsin, before these latest cuts. And how effective have the low tax rates been? Not so effective at all, as Wisconsin has lost jobs and had higher unemployment than the national average during the recent recession.

So the governor makes damaging tax cuts and turns sharply to demand the unions pay for the cuts.

But perhaps the most interesting footnote to the upcoming fiscal crisis in Wisconsin, is that if the state simply collected the average state tax on business that tax would generate an additional $1 billion a year in revenue, almost solely avoiding the fiscal crisis for the upcoming budget two year plan.

But Governor Walker wants to be like Reagan, a hero. More likely, he has at least a fighting chance to avoid a recall petition.

Jim Crawford is retired educator and political enthusiast living here in the Tri-State.