Wisconsin is facing a severe budget crisis. As part of their budget repair bill the Republicans in the Senate there included provisions that would hamstring unions in Wisconsin in order to save the state cash. These provisions included things like making union dues voluntary, forcing regular votes by members to keep unions operational, severely cut back their options on collective bargaining, etc.
The Republicans have enough votes to pass said bill over the Democratic Senators' objections. Their solution was to literally flee the state and refusing to return until their demands were met. This denied the majority Republicans the quorum necessary to have a vote. They literally took their ball and went home...well...fled home. They left, anyway.
For the last two months the negotiations raged, and protesters flocked to the capitol. Last night, however, the Republicans decided that the talks were going nowhere. So, they stripped all the financial portions away from the bill. Wisconsin law requires a quorum only for fiscal bills, and since this bill no longer had any fiscal, it no longer required the Democrat's input. It passed. The bill removes collective bargaining power from the public unions and also allows them to be fired if they strike during a state of emergency.
Detractors, such as our good friend Michael Moore, say this is an assault on the working class. In a bit of delicious irony, a common chant among protesters was "This is not democracy", which begs the question: What do you call it when representatives simply choose not to vote?
One wonders what the response would be next election cycle if the situation were reversed. Let us say that the Democrats are in charge and they propose a bill on gay marriage. If the minority Republicans fled the capitol to avoid the vote and stop the bill, I am absolutely convinced that the Left would
No comments:
Post a Comment