Specter Ghosts Out On EFCA

Arlen Specter, the only GOP senator to actually vote FOR the EFCA in 2007, has decided he's giving in to the wingnut minority.

Today on the Senate floor, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) announced his intention to vote against cloture on the Employee Free Choice Act. Specter was the only Republican to vote for cloture when the measure was last considered in 2007. During his announcement, Specter noted his previous support for EFCA, but suggested that the current condition of the economy makes “this a particularly bad time to enact employee’s choice legislation”:

SPECTER: The problem of the recession make this a particularly bad time to enact employees choice legislation. … I am announcing my decision now because I have consulted with a very large number of interested parties on both sides and I have made up my mind. Knowing that I will not support cloture on this bill, Senators may choose to move on and amend the [National Labor Relations Act], as I have suggested, or otherwise.

Additionally, Specter suggested that he did not want to bear the political cost of being the “decisive vote” in favor of EFCA.

So for now, the EFCA is pretty much dead unless Obama can do some more arm-twisting and explaining like he did on the stimulus. Without Al Franken seated and without Specter's vote, the Dems would only have 58 votes, not enough to stop the GOP filibuster.

Obama will fight back, and I think he'll have a pretty good case to present to the American people for strengthening unions when the unemployment rate hits double digits nationally later this year and people are wondering what recourse they have against the Wall Street titans who caused this mess.

Specter's gone in 2010 however. He's traded in getting his ass kicked in the primary for getting his ass kicked in the heart of Steeltown USA in the general election.