Today's link:
Moderate Wisconsin Republicans Offer Compromise, at the Wall Street Journal. From the story:
Mr. Walker's bill would close a projected $3.6 billion shortfall by forcing public employees to pay 5.8% of their salary toward their pensions and 12.6% of health-care premiums, up from 6% on average. Mr. Walker said it is necessary to cut many of the collective-bargaining rights from union members to prevent massive layoffs.
Union leaders have said they will accept the benefit cuts but will fight to maintain their collective-bargaining rights. On Sunday, the Wisconsin State Journal, Wisconsin's second largest newspaper, endorsed Mr. Schultz's proposal
Further down:
Even if moderate Republicans did move to support Mr. Schultz's proposal, it is not clear that Democrats would accept it. On Sunday, Democratic senators emphasized that the elimination of bargaining rights should be taken off the table all together since the state's public sector unions have accepted the governor's concessions on increase pension and health-care contributions to repair the current budget addressed by Mr. Walker's bill.
Several senators also said a compromise on the bill that would sunset the collective-bargaining provisions in 2013 would not be acceptable to Democrats. One reason is that Republicans will likely still be in control of both the state senate and assembly and simply extend the provisions. But a bigger reason, according to several senators, is that unions have already agreed to fix the fiscal issues.
Why should union busting be necessary when the unions agree to the proposed cuts? I wouldn't trust Republicans on anything at this moment.
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