After 3 weeks of Wisconsin Democrats boycotting the Senate and us hearing constantly that they were needed to vote, last night the Wisconsin GOP did a typical dirty trick to strip employees of bargaining rights:
In a bold gambit to put an end to the weeks-long budget standoff in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker (R) split his controversial budget-repair bill in two on Wednesday, allowing the Senate to pass the most hotly contested provisions while their 14 Democratic colleagues remained out of state.
The parliamentary maneuver, first reported by local press, enabled the Senate to strip nearly all collective bargaining rights from public workers without the quorum required to approve fiscal legislation.
Even one lawyer has declared the maneuver illegal under the Wisconsin open meeting laws, but more interesting is what this isn’t about. We have heard the GOP constantly say that stripping bargaining rights was about fixing the budget, but even the AP picked up on something:
It was also a 180-degree reversal by Walker and state Senate Republicans, who have insisted for the past three weeks that the collective bargaining provision was designed to help alleviate the state’s budget problems. State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) had previously said he would not attempt to pass any portions of the bill without Democrats present.
So apparently stripping bargaining rights ISN’T about the budget. That’s even more evident in this post at TPM:
It’s not just the budget bill needs a quorum — the big issue is that *any* bill with fiscal implications is supposed to have a quorum in the Wisconsin state Senate. So there are two choices here:
1. Collective bargaining has fiscal implications, and so the bill will be blocked in the courts and ruled unconstitutional.
2. Collective bargaining DOES NOT have direct fiscal implications, and Gov. Walker has been lying this entire time by making the case that it’s fiscally necessary.
So either the state R’s just passed an illegal bill, or Walker has been lying this entire time and really is just interested in union-busting.
I would have to go with the latter, given this video from Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader, Scott Fitzgerald:
In this interview, Fitzgerald admits that the union busting bill is about the 2012 elections and trying to hurt President Obama’s chances for re-election. At least we finally got an admission on this and it’s more proof that the GOP wants nothing more than to turn this country into a tyranny lead regime.