When the history books tell the story of Gov. Scott Walker’s fight with public-employee unions in Wisconsin, several stories will leap to the front: fourteen Democratic state senators running across the border to hold up a vote, Walker being prank-called amid the oppressive glare of a national story, and the Wisconsin capitol being overrun by government workers for nearly three weeks.
Yet in the last two days, the flurry of legislative activity used to pass the bill may have obscured one important point: It was the senate Democrats who shut down negotiations on the bill, leading to its swift passage in both houses of the legislature.
Shortly after Democratic senators fled the state, Republican senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald met with a team of legislative attorneys that laid out his options for passing the bill. Among these options was exactly what ended up happening — passing the bill with only a few appropriations stripped out, thereby circumventing the three-fifths quorum required for bills that spend money.
For three weeks, Fitzgerald held this option in his back pocket. He watched as senate Democrats taunted him from across the border, insulting him and his colleagues. Yet Fitzgerald showed patience, trying to negotiate with more moderate Democrats a resolution that would bring a peaceful end to the standoff.
Eventually, the actions of Democratic senate leader Mark Miller became incongruous and erratic. On Monday of this week, Miller sent Fitzgerald and Walker a letter indicating there should be negotiations between the two sides. When Walker released e-mails from his staff showing that he had been negotiating with several of Miller’s members on several important items, Miller shot back with another letter. This time, Miller essentially offered Fitzgerald and Walker two options: either drop the issue of collective bargaining altogether, or “keep lines of communication closed.”
With that letter, Fitzgerald recognized that senate Democrats were not interested in negotiating in good faith, so he exercised the option he’d had all along — he passed a bill out of the senate that retained almost all of the provisions of the original bill. The rules are very clear: A bill taken up in special session only has to be “noticed” by posting it on a legislative bulletin board. Fitzgerald gave two hours’ notice as a courtesy to Democrats. (The bill’s opponents have already begun filing lawsuits saying the bill was passed “illegally,” although the statutes and rules couldn’t be more clear.)
By the time the bill passed the assembly on Thursday, it had almost been forgotten that Democrats had essentially passed on many of the concessions offered by Fitzgerald and Walker. The final bill could have allowed for collective bargaining on workplace safety provisions; it could have included a provision allowing larger salary increases for public employees. Yet Mark Miller’s petulant intransigence made those concessions impossible, and therefore cost the public unions dearly.
While it seemed like the state was crumbling before their eyes, Scott Walker, Scott Fitzgerald and assembly speaker Jeff Fitzgerald stood firm, despite knowing they could end the impasse at any time. Their willingness to negotiate in good faith will likely be one of the untold stories of the conflict. And while the protesters will likely continue to march on the capitol, they may never realize that they could have had it a lot better, had senate Democrats not abruptly pulled the plug on negotiations.
— Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.
Thank you. I have grown sick of hearing how the Wisconsin Republicans "rammed" this bill through from the usually mild mannered Brian Williams to the clueless Ron Kind (US Rep, Wisc 3rd).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is nice to see such courage with GOP leaders. I hope others are taking note to have a spine. Thank you.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Wisconsin legislature should make a dollar-for-dollar reduction in the education budget for each dolar spent defending against the lawsuits the dems and their corrupt money-men are filing challenging the law.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRe: untold story. Does anyone recall Bush's efforts to get a UN Security Council authorization to enforce its violateed resolutions before invading Iraq? Of course not, that's memory hole stuff. The new reality = Bush rushed to invade based upon on a lie.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat, no mention of the death threats?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRun the clock back a little more than a decade to the breakup of Arthur Andersen and (then) Andersen Consulting. Supposedly the Consulting side made a sweet offer to the AA side a week or so before the arbitrator's decision came down. AA leadership rejected this offer only to have the arbitrator hand down a much less favorable (to them) final settlement.
And some years later came Enron...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is really rich to see Democrats howling about supposed sharp legislative practices given the legislative contortions used in connection with Obamacare. I mean really - "deem and pass." Give me a break.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNo matter what you offer to a liberal, it will never be enough. That is the lesson to take away from this Wisconsin episode. It is good to have some Republicans who finally stand up and push back when the Union thugs, hippies and cowardly Democrats behave in such an outrageous manner.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFacts, schmats. They don't matter. The story is the GOP is evil, they want to starve teachers, they rammed through a union-busting bill in the dark of night, and they want to give all the money to the rich.
Did I get the talking points right? The situation is still fluid, so it's hard to keep up.
Seriously, though, a rational objective observer can see who the adults are and who have been acting like petulant children. This is a very good summary of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the GOP.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI remember when Carol Moseley-Braun was elected Senator from Illinois and didn't know that Senate protocol required women to wear skirts on the floor of the Senate. She showed up in pants and the Dems in charge of the Senate immediately by voice vote changed the protocol so as not to embarrass her. No discussion. That is when I first learned that the Dems have no respect for rules or protocol.
It was the Dems when they were in the minority that first introduced the requirement for 60 votes to get anything passed in the Senate. When the Republicans went into the minority they adopted it. It was the Dems who when in the majority in the House first introduced the practice of shutting out the minority from committee hearings, introducing amendments and writing legislation.
Now the Dems have introduced the tactic of running away to prevent a quorum. Who will remember to thank the Dems before criticizing the Republicans when they first try this tactic? Not hardly.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGlad to see some Republicans that can think strategically and KEEP QUIET instead of getting caught up in short-term reactions and blabbing intentions, possibilities, etc., to the media. I'm impressed this stayed quiet as long as it was necessary.
Sure is convenient for the Democrats in Madison to have a large liberal university campus within walking distance of the Capitol providing "rent-a-protestor" services at no cost.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOne thing should be remembered, although I have my doubts since no one seems to have said anything about it while it was happening -- the majority of the protesters were college kids from the University of Wisconsin.
College kids. Idealistic, non-working, non-taxpaying, non-real-world-living, college kids. Damaging the capitol building, dirtying the public environment, disobeying law enforcement, trespassing, carrying violent anti-social signs, deliberately being disruptive to civility. This is the left. Never forget. Never forget.
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Exactly what I was going to say -- the notion that "tens of thousands of government employees" were protesting is largely untrue.
The protests numbered well under 1000 most of the time, and the majority were college students and "professional activists." You can tell from their long hair and beards and bongo drums . . . state workers actually had to show up at work to keep their jobs.
(And will they ever thank Walker for saving their jobs? The alternative to benefits concessions was always massive layoffs . . . )
I wonder if we'll see Dem minorities running away from tough votes anymore -- my sense is that this has not worked out well for them, and others are unlikely to repeat it.
Congrats to the Republican legislators & Gov for standing tough!
Also, thanks to the hippies for discrediting Unions, Democrats and Obama!
The mainstream voter is not riled up over this "labor unrest", only the Far Left (MSNBC is still obsessed with "Madison", the rest of the media is focused on the MidEast and now Japan.) Having the Far Left all jazzed up going into the 2012 election may not help Obama much this time (when he needs to try to run to the center; he would like them to SHUT UP and vote for him, not have to avoid their demands that he "do something for labor" like he promised.)
The biggest effect of the last 3 weeks may be the spotlight it has thrown on the Democrat/Union/Bureaucrat/Teacher/Stoodent/Hippie/Lefty nexus. This is bad for Obama.
Only 6% of voters are unionized govt workers, but 100% of voters pay taxes -- I like those odds a lot!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseInteresting background. Next time, the Republicans need to give the Democrats no more than 72 hours. Three days vs. three weeks make very little difference. It might make it less possible for the Dems to bring in the rent-a-mob as well.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe ironic thing here is that the only reason we have a Tea Party and the only reason we had a November wave election that handed governorships and state assemblies to the Repubs....is the ideological overreach of Obama/Pelosi.
I'll bet the Leftists had no idea that the "change" Obama was blathering about would be a conservative backlash that makes the Reagan revolution look tame.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don't often agree with Anne Coulter but she was making a point similar to this on Hannity the other night. Basically, the Wisconsin GOP and National GOP are losing the messaging battle and this could easily cost them the larger "war".
The Wisconsin GOP needs to learn some Chris Christie style tactics and get out in front of the biased liberal media and go directly to the people. It's pretty clear to anyone who digs into the details as to who is right here, but the message is getting muddled and most "everyday people" just don't have enough hours in the day to devote to reading about this stuff...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn terms of electoral politics, this whole deal is sure to blur the lines between Dems and the GOP for union workers. In fact, I bet they don't turn out at all in 2012!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWalker will be a GOP rock star, maybe he already is. A lot of the "media message" stuff Coulter and others are fretting about misses the point that this same "message war" was fought over Obamacare, and yet the truth got out anyway. Think about it. Remember the ABC Infomerical Town Hall? Remember the speeches? The glowing/fawning coverage from the MSM? The cries or racism and worse? Heck, Obamacare even passed. We lost the "message war", but won a huge victor in November. Why? Because people are smart enough to know stupid when they see it. WI Democrats went way over the line. And they did it so far out from anything with national implications that we, all of us, will have largely forgotten about WI by Nov 2012.
Democrats did not win the message war this time. If they had, Obama would have been jumping up and down at his presser today bragging about it. They lost. They lost big. Most importantly, they "nationalized" WI, and so this local fight escalated into a national one. And because of that the GOP is now winning the deficit reduction war in D.C. Walker's best line? Telling Obama to worry about balancing his own budget. We did not hear one PEEP out of The One after that. He lost to a 120-day-new GOP Governor in WI, and he knows it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWalker said it was about deficit reduction and the union accepted increased contributions to their pensions (after Walker gave away a similar amount in tax cuts--by the way does anyone know how many businesses pay taxes in WI?)Then it became about collective bargaining. During the prank phone call and through Fitzgerald's rants it has become clear that it is about busting unions and taking away a resource from the Democrats coffers. Let's be upfront about the whole tactic and then ask yourselves where the Republican's support comes from---hardworking Americans and retirees and poor people? Or big business and astroturf organizations like Rove's and Armey's and the Koch's?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLiving, you forgot to say "Koch brothers". Liberals have to invoke the Koch brothers at least every other sentence.
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