The news out of Wisconsin is that the state Republicans used some procedural skulduggery to pass Gov. Walker’s union busting measure. Apparently, they called a conference committee at the last minute, without the normally required 24 hour notice. They then split the budget off from the union busting measures. In Wisconsin, apparently, a bill that has no fiscal impact is not subject to the same quorum rules as the ones that have stalled the Wisconsin legislation for the last few weeks.
We’ve heard Walker maintaining, earnestly, that the union busting was necessary to fix the budget. This new claim, that the anti-union measures have no fiscal impact, puts the lie to that claim. This is just union hating. Anyone who claims that anti-union measures were fiscally necessary can now safely be called full of shit.
As a former legislative employee, what interests me more is the last minute conference committee.
The move ended a bizarre two-and-a-half hour legislative sprint in which the Senate hastily gaveled in and sent the measure to a Senate-Assembly conference committee, which typically works out differences between similar bills passed by the two houses.
Although the Senate hadn’t yet passed the bill, Senate rules allow the Senate president to move a bill to a conference committee if the Assembly’s intent is clear and it’s past the amendable stage — a step the Senate took last month.
. . .
The 6 p.m. conference committee lasted just minutes, and featured an angry speech by Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, the only Democratic member present, who accused the Republicans of violating the state’s open meeting law and “trampling on democracy.”
“Mr. Chairman, this is a violation of law,” he said, referring to the short notice given for the meeting.Typically, 24 hours’ notice is required for a public meeting. There are exceptions, but it was not clear Wednesday that the conference committee met those standards.
It was before my time, but rumor has it that Sen. Garton, long time Republican leader of the Indiana Senate, did a lot to clean up procedural shenanigans that used to be pretty common, one of which was to call last minute conference committees – or last minute room changes for conference committees. Sen. Garton apparently regularized how the Senate did its business, and that has done a lot to instill faith in the process. I’m not sure the importance of that can be overstated. Unless people buy into the legislative process, legislation is really just words on a piece of paper backed up by guys with guns.
I notice that the hypocritical Republicans allowed the police to keep their ability to bargain, when that’s the most noxious union, of all.
When the government has a gun in its hand pointed at your head, the Republicans can be counted on to support that type of big government.
Yes, it’s really awful when legislative maneuvers are used to pass a bill and block the voice of the minority party.
http://www.liberalwhoppers.com/2010/02/14/dems-prepare-to-defy-american-voters-by-passing-obamacare-via-reconciliation/
Of course, the difference here is that the GOP Senators actually showed up for work and did their best to convince the people and the legislature that it was a bad bill. The Wisconsin Dems, like their Indiana brethren, just threw a tantrum and left, rather than participating in democracy.
Wow, I was really misguided. Now that I know the Democrats were “throwing tantrums” and “not working,” it’s all so clear to me.
Oh, yeah, the notorious muzzling of super-minority Senate Republicans on national healthcare, after only one entire year of compromise on the bill, when it was rammed through with that shameless procedural trick supplanting the Will of the People with a simple majority vote of their elected representatives. I’m sure Democrats are dying of a thousand cuts after that post, Chris.
Refusing a quorum call is accepted procedure. Just like filibustering a bill in the Senate, but Republicans couldn’t do that in 2010, so the matter was left to quasi-Republicans Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson. You know, Indiana Republicans are free to renounce the practice any time they wish. Maybe make it a Constitutional amendment that they won’t ever walk out. Again.
And, Chris, choose one. Either the majority gets to pass any piece of legislation it wishes, while the minority plays matador defense, or stop using “Obamacare”–clearly, in a more universal form, a cornerstone of the Democratic victory in 2008–as an example of a tyrannical infamy.
As usual, you take a smiddgeon of information and blow it all out of proportion.
When they say that it has “no fiscal impact”, what they mean is that there are no direct appropriations. That is the bar for whether a quorum is needed or not.
Thus, they are not “full of shit”.
You know what’s really funny? All the protests, all the antics and dirty hippiedom that makes me hate Madison and everything that it is and stands for, and yet Wisconsin is no less progressive today than… Indiana.
I still don’t understand why Mitch could eliminate collective bargaining by executive fiat, and nothing like what happened in Madison occurred.
Well, I do understand it on one level. Madison is a very “special” place. The combination of a state capitol and a flagship state university gives you a combination of cluelessness that you don’t get when you just have a state capitol.
Funny Doug… I don’t remember you using the word “skullduggery” to define the procudures used to pass Obamacare.
Doghouse: If you believe that Obamacare was the “will of the people”, then you really haven’t been awake since the bill was introduced. The election of a Republican, Scott Brown, in Mass. (of all places) was probably the first indication that the bill wasn’t all too popular with the masses. That procedure is what required the Dem. “skullduggery” (word of the day), and is what indicated to our Congress that pasing the biggest entitlement of the last 50 years, at the same time we have the worst budget crisis in our nation’s short 233 year history, was at minimum a case of bad timing. The fact that Republicans have been voted back into office, 2 years AB (after Bush), is a glaring sign of Obamacare’s unpopularity as well.
In Indiana, as I recall, collective bargaining for state employees was implemented by executive order in the first place. So, all Gov. Daniels had to do was issue another executive order.
Some of my posts on the matter here and here.
Paul, I don’t recall any abrupt shifts in rationale as to the need for health care reform used as a fig leaf to justify calling hearings with little or no prior notice.
I don’t know about that…. remember the famous Pelosi quote of: “we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it”? Doesn’t passing a bill without reviewing it imply the same type of issues as calling hearings with short notice?
No two situations are going to be exactly the same, but these two situations are similar enough that you really have to perform some tortuous mind manipulations to believe Wisconsin’s procedures were “skulldugery”, and Obamacare was simply the democratic process at work.
Do you truly believe that if a state version of Obamacare was passed by Wisconsin Dems by having a hearing with short notice, you’d have a blog post calling it “procedural skullduggery”?
Oh yeah, the Senator Garton who wasn’t wingnut enough for the Republicans, so they got rid of him.
Memories.
Joe, I voted against Garton (but later, not for the Republican replacement of him) because he blocking the closing of a BMV branch in Hope, IN.
The BMV wanted to close it, it wasn’t worth the money, but Garton injected himself into the internal workings of the BMV and cost the state more money.
So… those old posts, what do you think about what you wrote then? Has it played out as you predicted? In particular, do you think that after 6 years of Mitch, he has and does cut corners?
It’s pretty cool that you could whip out those old posts.
What is not clear yet is how public opinion will sort out on which side is the most deserving.The two sides in Wisconsin have been defined already in media as ‘mob rule’ or ‘workers rights’ vs ‘ corporate greed’ or ‘state fiscal responsibility’. In Wisconsin it’s been a fight seen as unfair by both sides to begin with.
Huge amounts of corporate and labor union money will be thrown into the national debate .It’s going to be intense and brutal.
Cutting corners probably isn’t the right description. I think he’s impatient, and gets annoyed by shared power — or at least by a muddled chain of command — but more so then than now.
1. health care reform was a central plank of the obama campaign. it’s not something he sprung on the public once in office, as gov walker’s union-busting bill was.
2. congress debated HCR for a full year, trying in vain to get republicans on board, but no matter how many concessions were offered, it was never enough. only after it became clear that republicans were arguing in bad faith did senate democrats resort to the reconciliation process. in contrast, gov walker *first proposed* his changes to collective bargaining just one month ago.
so no, i don’t see a lot of similarities there… except for the “republicans arguing in bad faith” part.
Mitch is fundamentally annoyed that the Executive is inferior to the Legislature, but dictatorial tendencies afflict most Republicans, these days.
“Anyone who claims that anti-union measures were fiscally necessary can now safely be called full of shit.”
Nah. It’s the guys who stripped them out and said it had nothing to do with finances that are full of …. uh … it.
“congress debated HCR for a full year, trying in vain to get republicans on board,”
stAllio: those just aren’t the facts I remember. The ones I remember are Congress meeting for a year, frequently behind closed doors, to get DEMOCRATS on board. Remember Brad Ellsworth’s amendment? Remember Stupak’s Amendment? These were negotiations to get pro-life Dems to vote for the bill, not Republicans, who were not even at the bargaining table. If the Dems tried to get Republicans on board, they would have included things like tort reform.
This whole concept that a politician has to campaign for something to be able to pass it is junk. We now want to require our legislatures to campaign for every issue before it can be passed without a minority party’s approval? Does this concept apply to Senators too? So, if I didn’t put something in my campaign 5 years ago, I need to run again with this as a central point of my campaign before I am allowed to pass it over a minority party’s objection? How can you not see how absurd that suggestion is? Last I checked, the legislature is the one that passes a bill. Did Baron Hill campaign on cap and trade before he sold out Hoosiers with his vote on the subject?
Fair enough.
Either way, they can’t have it both ways – unless Buzzcut’s right about the meaning of “fiscal impact” for Wisconsin procedural rules.
“Unless people buy into the legislative process, legislation is really just words on a piece of paper backed up by guys with guns.”
Is that sentence any less true if you strike the first seven words?
The majority spoke in November.
Of course Buzzcut is right. That is what the rule is based on. If there are no direct appropriations, it has no fiscal impact. Case closed.
That doesn’t help much unless we know what they were saying and whether, in any case, that’s the last word.
Elections are like an oracle mumbling crazily with a bunch of self-serving priests “interpreting” for you.
“Those ballot totals just look like numbers to you? Oh, but they’re so much more. Trust me. They *totally* mean “bust the unions.””
Walker most certainly campaigned on the collective bargaining issue.
Seeing as how these collective bargaining “rights” were implemented by Democrat legislatures over the years, I really don’t see why saying “the majority spoke in November” doesn’t put a stop to the protests. If you don’t like it, vote the bums out and reinstate the “rights”.
Public employee unions are undemocratic (small d) in many, many ways, and these protests are just one example of it.
Buzzcut, do me the favor of showing me where Governor Walker campaigned on collective bargaining. His own campaign site shows nothing of the sort.
His “Issues” page has nothing on it. These were his campaign planks:
Start the state budget at zero.
Require the use of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP)…
Strip policy and pork projects from the state budget.
End the practice of raiding segregated state funds to pay for other programs.
Restore Wisconsin’s reputation for clean and honest government…
His “News” lines talks about collective bargaining, but only starting in February of this year, –after– he was governor.
Revisionism, not for amateurs.
A “majority” spoke in 2008, yet similar obstructionisms flowed from the ranks of the Republican minority. Where was your smug indignation then, I wonder?
It is not revisionism. If it is revisionism, why were the unions campaigning against him with stories like this and this.
We all know that Obama campaigned on “Hopeandchange”, not socialized medicine.
And at the end of the day, the Democrats rammed health care reform down our throats, and it is the law of the land. So what’s the problem?
In any case, there is no doubt that running away is now a legitimate parliamentary trick. I can’t wait for someone on my side of an issue to use it.
Boy, I suck with the embedded links today. Sorry about that!
Fixed the links.
And, boy, mileage varies on that whole “rammed health care” angle. For me, I heard a lot about changing health care during the campaign. Then, it seemed like the Democrats gave away half the store before they even got started, taking single payer off the table. Then, they compromised even further, taking the public option off the table. Then, there was the interminable courtship of the likes of Olympia Snow and the glacial foot dragging of Ben Nelson’s committee.
If that’s “ramming,” I’d hate to see what “deliberation and compromise” look like.
Here is where I get “rammed” from. You had all these raucous town hall meetings, where Congressmen were so much as tarred and feathered. You had Scott Brown being elected to “The Swimmer”‘s seat in Taxachussets. The health care bill was killed 3 or 4 times, but it kept coming back.
I remember when it was finally passed, I was in disbelief. So it felt like it was rammed through to me. But I can see from your perspective as well.
@Jason
“I voted against Garton (but later, not for the Republican replacement of him) ”
So who did you vote for?
Just wondering . . .
If the scenario were reversed and a Republican minority was hiding out in Ohio, would the Rs and Ds be making each other’s arguments?
Seems confirmation bias is in play.
The key factor was— has the law been broken in WI – did they violate the law with their committee votes….
We’ll probably never find out. The permanent Republican majority in the state Senate has meant that the Republicans have always had a place at the table and will for the foreseeable future.
The House Republicans walked out in 1991 and 2001, but that was just declining to come to the floor. They were still around the State House apparently. Had they been faced with a Democratic Senate and Governor, they may well have gone further.
For my part, I think I’ve fairly consistently been unhappy about the U.S. Senate Republicans using the filibuster so frequently, but I don’t think I’ve gotten too strident about The Will of the People and bemoaning the death of democracy and whatnot. It’s a tool in the toolbox. So is breaking a quorum. But, they’re not precision tools – so you hope legislators use them sparingly for jobs that could use a little more finesse.
Thanks, Buzzcut. I stand corrected on Governor Walker.
of buzzcut’s two links, the first does not mention any changes to collective bargaining rights. the second merely speculates that walker might have such changes in mind (in a section dense with jargon, i should add).
so though walker did campaign on his hostility, he did not campaign on eliminating collective bargaining, and certainly didn’t discuss the issue in terms that non-unionization wonks would understand.
of buzzcut’s two links, the first does not mention any changes to collective bargaining rights. the second merely speculates that walker might have such changes in mind (in a section dense with jargon, i should add).
so though walker did campaign on his hostility to unions, he did not campaign on eliminating collective bargaining, and certainly didn’t discuss the issue in terms that non-unionization wonks would understand.
I guess I can see where you guys are coming from. Walker did not shout “I AM GOING TO END COLLECTIVE BARGAINING” at every campaign stop and before every media event. I can understand how you would feel blindsided.
Perhaps you will channel that blindsided feeling in sympathy to Republicans, who were also blindsided by health care reform in a similar way.
In all seriousness, at least in Indiana, right-to-work groups are fairly active in funding Republicans. I don’t know why anyone would be surprised that one of the first things a newly Republican legislature would do would be to push right-to-work.
And the educational reforms are right in line with what Mitch and Tony have been asking for for years.
BTW, how many of you know that Indiana was a right-to-work state from 1957 to 1965?
Just a reminder – Fed employees have no bargaining rights, cannot strike or stay at home and have to pay into their own retirement and healthcare. Is it too much to ask the folks in WI to do the same? just say’in…
I’ve often wondered how people who elected Evan Bayh could also elect Richard Lugar.
Is there no difference?
What am I missing?
I heard yesterday that the Indiana Senate passed a prohibition from talking on the phone while driving. I try to pay decent attention to Indiana politics, and don’t remember a single Republican stating this intention while running in 2010. Therefore, the Democrats in absentia should add this bill to the list of bills that must be killed before they come back. Right?