Rep. Bruce Braley calls to investigate Wisconsin hiring practices

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker appeared by the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Thursday where he was questioned by U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) on recent news reports indicating Walker may have used his office to the benefit of campaign donors. Braley has asked committee leadership to launch an official investigation into the hiring and promotion practices used by the Walker administration.

“As I’m sure you have seen, there have been recent news reports regarding the hiring practices of Governor Walker and his administration,” Braley wrote in a letter to U.S. Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD), committee leaders. “Many of these reports raised concerns regarding a particular promotion of an appointee within the administration, after that appointee’s father donated a significant amount of money to Governor Walker’s campaign. These news reports bring into question the possibility that the Governor used his taxpayer-funded office to benefit campaign contributors.”

Walker, who had been called to testify before the committee by Issa, testified that recent efforts in Wisconsin to diminish public-sector unions were “progressive.” While pointing to specific aspects of his plan, like shared contributions for health insurance coverage and retirement accounts, Walker neglected to note that union leadership were willing to make such concessions as a part of the bargaining process and that tempers flared when his administration and Wisconsin Republicans refused to back away from limiting collective bargaining rights. Such rights are codified for private-sector unions as a part of the Wagner (National Labor Relations) Act, but public-sector unions have no such protections.

Gov. Pet Shumlin of Vermont, a Democrat, was also invited to testify by Cummings, and offered his bipartisan state cuts as a direct contrast to the situation that erupted in Wisconsin.

“What is puzzling to me about the current debate about state budgets is that the focus has been not on bringing people together to solve current problems, like we have done in Vermont, but on division and blame,” Shumlin told the committee. “I do not believe that those to blame for our current financial troubles are our law enforcement officers, firefighters and other state employees whose services we take for granted.”

Cummings agreed, noting his “strong objection” in his opening statement to “efforts by politicians who try to use the current economic downturn to strip American workers of their rights — the right to negotiate working conditions that are safe, the right to negotiate due process protections against being fired arbitrarily, and the right to negotiate fair pay for an honest day’s work.”

The video below shows Braley’s questioning of Walker, including an interruption by Issa to instruct Walker that he only need “respond to questions [he] came here prepared to respond to:”