1. It seems the immediate next thing is a court challenge on the question of whether the provisions they separated out are fiscal in nature or whatever it is that would require a 20-member quorum. Will probably will seek a stay as well. I am not sure about the legal merits, but it would seem that somebody would file a court challenge. 2. I think the calculation is that the "political points" scored (by, for example, forcing the Republicans now to essentially admit their union busting bill is separate from the budget and fiscal situation) will motivate the Democratic leaning electorate to either recall the Republican senators or vote Democratic in the next election and that this will outweigh the setback experienced by the unions in the meantime in terms of funding, collective bargaining power, etc. I don't think the unions are going away before the next election and the Democrats are betting that the the unions (and their supporters) will make the Republicans pay sooner or later.
What are the questions? Everyone was in agreement that collective bargaining was a non-budget item - Dems were primarily arguing that position in saying it was unrelated to fixing the budget problems. The quorum requirements aren't needed for non-budget items.
For the Democratic political party, it will outweigh the setbacks experienced by the unions. There's no doubt they won all sorts of political points - more than I would have expected, frankly. But for the union members themselves, it's a different story. They got the worst-case scenario of getting nothing at all. They'd have been better off with the compromise floated a few weeks ago that only took away their bargaining rights for 2011.
By that do you mean locking the capital and holding it hostage? http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/116503/ What a bunch of thugs. Liberals just aren't mature enough to know how to protest.
Did y'all really think that the liberals' "run and hide" strategy would work? They just got PWN3D, laughing in the face of the union thugs' intimidation tactics.
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The Republicans basically rushed through everything quickly so that the public wouldn't know what was going on until it had already happened and apparently, there are laws in place to prevent legislators from "pulling fast ones" on the public without their knowledge. As I understand it, Wisconsin law says that every meeting of a governmental body must give public notice 24 hours before the beginning of the meeting. The Republicans didn't do that. A surprise conference committee meeting was called. The met for 5 minutes, produced a bill, and then voted on it immediately with no one having had a chance to actually read it. Wisconsin law also says that all meetings of state government must be open to the public at all times, must be held in a public place and with reasonable access to the public. The state capitol had locked all doors to the capitol except for one where security wasn't letting anyone through anyway.
Pyrrhic victory. The Republicans had to sneak it through and basically admit that the bill was never fiscally related in the first place. The American people want to see responsible deficit reduction-even though I think it's foolhardy, I also do think that the American people are not looking for the ideological war Republicans are proposing at the moment.
What? This debate has been going on for almost a month. The first post on this thread is dated 2/17. Man they really rushed that through.
So creating a new bill, pushing it through committee and voting on it all in about 15 minutes while not allowing the public into the capitol as is their right isn't rushing it through?
the ACA was made public 72 hours before voted on in Congress. Close, but not quite equal to a month. http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/mar/08/bachmanns-105-billion-spending-was-it-secret/
