Patriot Games

Wisconsin State Senate Republicans stripped the financial parts out of the budget repair bill and passed the "strip collective bargaining from employee unions" part with no Dems present to even vote on it.  TPM's Eric Kleefield:

Capping a dramatic turn of events, the Wisconsin state Senate on Wednesday night passed a new, stripped-down "budget repair bill" -- which now excludes all the fiscal elements of the original budget repair bill, and simply includes the original's provisions to roll back the collective bargaining and organizational rights of Wisconsin's public employee unions.

With all 14 Democrats absent, having fled the state weeks ago in order to block the three-fifths budget quorum, the bill passed by an 18-1 margin, with only moderate Republican Dale Schultz voting no.
Gov. Scott Walker (R) has released this statement:

"The Senate Democrats have had three weeks to debate this bill and were offered repeated opportunities to come home, which they refused. In order to move the state forward, I applaud the Legislature's action today to stand up to the status quo and take a step in the right direction to balance the budget and reform government. The action today will help ensure Wisconsin has a business climate that allows the private sector to create 250,000 new jobs."

Meanwhile, state Democratic Party chairman Mike Tate has released this statement, vowing to recall all those Republican state Senators who are eligible under the state's recall laws, which require at least one year of a term to be completed -- and to recall Walker next year:

"Using tactics that trample on the traditions of our Legislature, the Republican leadership has betrayed our state. Republicans have rubber-stamped the desire of the Koch Brothers and their godshead Scott Walker to cripple Wisconsin's middle class and lower benefits and wages for every single wage-earner in our state. The vote does nothing to create jobs, does nothing to strengthen our state, and shows finally and utterly that this never was about anything but raw political power. We now put our total focus on recalling the eligible Republican senators who voted for this heinous bill. And we also begin counting the days remaining before Scott Walker is himself eligible for recall."

Whirlwinds and reaping come to mind.  Remember, the entire plan here is to eliminate public unions, and by doing so break the political back of state level Democratic Party organization.

This was never about the state budget, or the state's deficit, or taxes or expenditures.  This was about partisan payback, one side using the power they were given by the people not to govern the whole state fairly, but to cynically and cruelly dismantle the political power of their opponents to eliminate them, and it didn't matter whose throat they cut to win as they plowed through teachers, firefighters, cops, and nurses.

And in doing so, they proved beyond a doubt that the only thing that mattered was to wreck as many state employees lives as possible as partisan punishment for daring to support the unions or the Democrats.  It's not about governing the state, it's about destroying the opposition so that you don't have to govern.



I believe the Republicans in Wisconsin have badly, badly miscalculated here.  A big, red line was crossed. And it's something people aren't going to soon forget.  The first shots in the Great Austerity War have been truly fired.  There will be more.  And the losers will be American workers, unionized or not.