Scott Walker has consistently argued that stripping public workers of their collective bargaining rights was necessary to balance Wisconsin's budget. For example, when he signed the bill stripping collective bargaining rights into law, he tweeted the following statement:
At 9:30 a.m. I signed the budget repair bill to save jobs, balance the budget, help taxpayers, and reform gov’t.
However, today in a congressional hearing, Walker told Representative Dennis Kucinich that stripping collective bargaining rights doesn't save Wisconsin any money. Here's the video:
Here's a rush transcript:
Kucinich (0:43): Let me ask you about some of the specific provisions in your proposal to strip collective bargaining rights. First, your proposal would require unions to hold annual votes to continue representing their own members. Can you please explain to me and members of this committee how much money this provision saves for your state budget?
Walker (1:07):That and a number of other provisions we put in because if you are going to ask, if you are going to put in place a change like that, we wanted to make sure that we protected the worker's of our state so they had a right to know what kind of value they got out of it. It's the same reason we gave worker's the right to choose, which is a fundamental America right, the right to choose whether or not they want to be a part of a union, and whether they went up to a thousand--
Kucinich (1:26): Would you answer the question? How much money does it save Governor? Just answer the question.
Walker: It doesn't save any.
Additionally, under questioning from Representative Gerry Connolly, Walker admitted that he did not explicitly campaign on stripping collective bargaining rights. Greg Sargent summarizes:
Asked if he had really campaigned on a plan to roll back collective bargaining rights, Walker repeatedly danced around the question, insisting he had campaigned on a “range” of promises to impose fiscal discipline. But Connolly kept pressing the point, and finally asked him point blank: Did you “explicitly” campaign on this proposal?
“No,” Walker conceded.
In summary, stripping collective bargaining rights doesn't save the state of Wisconsin any money, and Scott Walker didn't explicitly campaign on stripping collective bargaining rights. Source for these claims: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.