When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker rode into Madison on the 2010 GOP election wave, he used a giant, scary number to justify the hole he ripped in the fabric of our state: $3,600,000,000.

That's three billion six hundred million dollars, the size of the "structural deficit" facing the state when he took office in January of 2011. The state was suffering a real challenge at the time -- I mean, every state was, as the country had not yet escaped the grip of the Great Recession. But Walker's number was inflated; the state was projected to have an actual deficit of less than $140 million when the fiscal year ended in June of 2011.

That's not pocket change, but it also was not an emergency of the size that justified what happened in Wisconsin when the Walker's budget repair bill, the infamous Act 10, was jammed through the legislature.

The larger number, that $3.6 billion, was the difference between the pie-in-the-sky budget proposals from various state agencies for the 2011-13 budget and what the state expected to raise in revenue over those two years. In other words, Walker's "$3.6 billion deficit" talk was all speculative, and not a real crisis. The state was not holding an unpaid $3.6 billion debt with hired goons waiting just outside our front door to break our legs if we didn't pay up.

That bogus deficit, which after the election fueled the attack on unions, sat at the center of Walker's 2010 campaign, with Walker blaming his predecessor Jim Doyle -- and, by extension, all Democrats like his 2010 opponent Tom Barrett -- as fiscally irresponsible and leaving the state up a creek, money-wise.

That was my argument, at least, when I was blogging regularly at my own site back in 2010 and 2011 and all of that was happening in real time. "Wisconsin's broke!" Walker would claim, and I'd fire back, "No, we're not!" I didn't win that argument then, obviously.

I probably won't win it now, either, although this time I'm in part taking Walker's side.

You've almost certainly seen the headlines from last week: Wisconsin is facing a $1.8 billion deficit for the 2015-17 budget. It's the same deal -- this is the difference between imaginary spending that hasn't been passed yet and project revenue over those two years. The Democrats are making hay out of it, since basically the one thing Walker claimed to be good at in the 2010 campaign was managing budgets. (We here in Milwaukee County knew better, but we were outvoted.) So Democrats like his opponent Mary Burke and Senate Minority Leader Chris Larson went on the offensive.

But I don't think that $1.8 billion number is a fair attack. It wasn't fair when Walker used the similar number against Doyle and Barrett, and it's not fair today, especially the way it's being used to suggest that right now the state has a $1.8 billion bill due and those hired goons are again waiting just outside the door. That's just not true and I wish my party would stop implying that.

What is fair game for Democrats to use, though, is the actual deficit Wisconsin is facing. Like the $140 million the state needed to come up with in early 2011, in early 2015 the state will need to find $396 million to patch the real, actual shortfall between spending and revenue this year. That is not speculation or imagination or even, as with Doyle's deficit, fallout from a recession -- that's real, tangible financial mismanagement at the state level.

That's right -- Walker, who claimed budget management skills as his primary qualification to be your governor, has run up a deficit more than double what Jim Doyle did during the Great Recession. Here we are with an economic recovery happening all over the country (not a great one, but a recovery nonetheless), and self-proclaimed fiscal genius Scott Walker has managed to run a massive real deficit.

Walker's answer, in a budget plan released last week that WisPolitics generously called "light on details," is more tax cuts and increased spending on things like drug testing for state aid recipients, something that costs more money than it saves according to the experience of states like Florida that tried it. Less revenue, more spending, and then what, Walker? Somehow the deficit goes away? Sure, that makes sense.

Which is not to say that Walker's budget cuts no spending; it slashes state support of the moochers. By which I mean the people who can't find jobs in Walker's still-sluggish Wisconsin economy, and not, as you might expect, Walker campaign donors who get favors from his economic development agency.

Walker also still refuses to accept federal Medicaid expansion, which would have meant $120 million over the last two years -- not enough to wipe out the deficit Walker created, but enough to make it not quite so embarrassing.

Is Walker vulnerable on the state budget? Absolutely. But let's be honest about why. His bad fiscal management, the way he prioritizes tax cuts above all and refuses federal help like Medicaid expansion or transportation funds, has left this state in much worse shape four years after he declared a fiscal emergency. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all the argument you need -- and it's one I hope I can win this time.