Yesterday Power Line posted a summary of the Budget Repair Bill Governor Walker of Wisconsin in proposing.
According to the article, the bill will:
– Ask government workers to pay half the cost of their pensions – still less than private employees pay for their pensions
– Ask government workers to pay 12% of their own health insurance premiums – the national average for the private sector is over 20%
– End collective bargaining for government unions for pensions and benefits. Allow bargaining only for raises that are less than inflation.
– End forced union dues, collected by the state. Union dues would become voluntary.
– Union members get to vote yearly on whether to keep their union.
In the eyes of the unions there are three major problems with this law–none of which have to do with workers benefits. The end of forced union dues might put a serious crimp in the money the unions collect that gets used for political purposes. Voting yearly to keep the union might force the unions to be more concerned about their members and less concerned about Democrat politics. The end of collective bargaining would take a lot of power away from the unions–they do not want to give up their power.
None of these changes are earthshaking to the teachers–they are earthshaking to the unions.
Today the American Spectator posted the following at its “Prowler” site:
“The White House has been watching the Wisconsin state employee labor fight with a degree of alarm, says a White House aide: “I think all of us recognize what this could mean for us in the re-election fight,” says the aide. “Without well financed labor, we’re screwed.””
That statement tells us everything we need to know about what is happening in Wisconsin.
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted this statement by Lindsey Graham on Meet The Press yesterday:
“Despite the nonsense on union placards in Madison, the budget-repair bill wasn’t some diktat from an entrenched governor; Scott Walker won the election less than four months ago with this specific plan on the agenda. Not only did Republicans win the top spot by putting this proposal in front of voters, the GOP won control of both chambers of the legislature as well. Elections have consequences, which everyone but the unions seem to acknowledge.”
Mob rule should not overturn the results of an election.