Scott Walker lied to Congress

Governor's testimony contradicts available documents

WTDY has pointed out that Gov. Scott Walker lied before a Congressional committee while discussing collective bargaining rights and his controversial "budget repair bill" that he passed in early 2011.

Regarding the process in which Governor Walker went about achieving concessions from state employees, Walker thought it was important to put in the record that, "In December, after the elections but before I was sworn into office, the public sector unions and the state rushed to the lame-duck session Legislature and to the Governor and tried to pass through contracts that would have locked us into a dire financial situation."

But drafting documents obtained by WTDY News from the non-partisan Legislative Reference Bureau reveal that Act 10 was actually being drafted in November, just weeks after Walker was elected governor. As lawmakers struggled to pass state worker contracts in December of 2010, a non-partisan state attorney was already hard at work drafting the very provision in ACT 10 that stripped away bargaining rights for nearly all public employees in Wisconsin.

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In his testimony before Congress, Walker cited this lame-duck session as the catalyst for Act 10. "When people ask why we didn’t begin by negotiating, the tone was set early on by the process that was taken – after the election but before we were sworn in – and that’s why it became clear to us that we need to empower our state and local government to make those sort of long-term changes."

Emphases added.

What Walker told the committee, while under oath, was that the reason for Act 10 came about due to events that were occurring in December between unions and the legislature. But the documents that are available don't match Walker's tall tale. Act 10 was envisioned a whole month before the lame duck session.

In short, Walker knowingly lied while under oath by changing up the timeline and rationale for his controversial bill. And we all know how conservatives feel about officeholders who lie under oath.

The questions surrounding Walker's testimony are indeed serious enough to bring up the "p" word -- perjury. In fact, the committee that questioned Walker is the very same that questioned Roger Clemens when HE lied under oath. Clemens now faces perjury charges himself.

Most of us would like the system to hold an elected official to the same standards of a baseball player, if not that than to higher standards.

What's disturbing about the entire situation is that Walker's story-shifting is a disservice to the people of Wisconsin. He fails to provide the people with a rational reason for why Act 10 was needed. Likely, it's because it wasn't needed -- except as part of Walker's plan of "divide and conquer," which also has piqued the interests of some of those very same Congressional committee members from last year.

Wisconsin deserves a governor who is better than this. We don't want a governor who could potentially be charged with perjury, nor do we desire a governor whose involvement in an ongoing John Doe investigation is all but certain.

Wisconsin deserves a governor we can put our trust into, not one who we cannot afford to trust.