To be a fly on the wall in the Republican caucus must be the best place to be these days under the statehouse dome. As nearly 30,000 Wisconsinites filled the Capitol square today, and WEAC urges all teachers to get to Madison Thursday and Friday, comes word that some in the GOP are hearing something.
What is echoing off the marble walls of the capitol are the words and shouts from citizens and voters who are absolutely disgusted with this union busting bill.
There is no way to escape the fact that the nuclear option employed by Governor Walker against the unions, a man I need to remind my readers does not have a college degree, was a cold calculated partisan power play. That there are members in his party that feel the heat from voters, and understand the mood across the state, is becoming more clear.
But let us be clear about one thing.
There is nothing acceptable from the Wisconsin State Legislature than the outright killing of this union busting bill.
That there are nervous members of the GOP trying to put something together to reduce the tension filling the corridors of the Capitol may seem promising.
But no!
There is no way that these members of the GOP can pull some words together in an amendment and make union members think all is fine. It is not.
After all….There is no way to pick a turd up by the clean end.
Even if GOP amendments were what union members could abide there is no way to think that Governor Walker would not create veto moves that would put this state in the same place we are today.
The only way to deal with this bill is to kill it.
And then flush it!
GOP Sens. Dale Schultz and Van Wanggaard are proposing an alternative to the guv’s budget repair bill that would strip public employees of their ability to collectively bargain on wages, pensions and health care costs through 2013 before reinstating those rights, according to a source familiar with caucus discussion.
Public employees would retain their ability to bargain on other issues, and the alternative calls for including firefighters, police, state patrol and state inspectors in the proposed changes to wages, health care and pensions. Gov. Scott Walker had proposed excluding them.
The alternative also calls for requiring employees to contribute between 7 percent and 8 percent of their salaries to their pension costs through the end of 2013, when they could begin to bargain those payments again. The payment is higher than the 5 percent Walker has proposed and would pull in millions more for the state over the next biennium.
CAFFEINATED POLITICS 