GOP govs strike hard at unions
By: Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith
Politico.com
February 20, 2011
In what passes for major spending news in Washington, a coalition of House Democrats and Republicans this week banded to kill a backup engine for one Air Force jet project.
Total savings: just under a half-billion dollars, chump change in the federal budget.
Meanwhile in the states, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and other members of a new class of combative Republican governors are fighting pitched battles over painful budget cuts that affect issues that once were thought to be untouchable such as teacher tenure and collective-bargaining rights.
These showdowns in the states — expressed most spectacularly this week in Wisconsin’s capital — have brought to life a long-standing cliché of government: The most consequential political action and the most serious policy debates are not taking place in Washington, which appears unlikely to tackle any big-ticket items but, rather, beyond the Beltway, in the state capitols, which Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously labeled the “laboratories of democracy.”
(More here.)
Politico.com
February 20, 2011
In what passes for major spending news in Washington, a coalition of House Democrats and Republicans this week banded to kill a backup engine for one Air Force jet project.
Total savings: just under a half-billion dollars, chump change in the federal budget.
Meanwhile in the states, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and other members of a new class of combative Republican governors are fighting pitched battles over painful budget cuts that affect issues that once were thought to be untouchable such as teacher tenure and collective-bargaining rights.
These showdowns in the states — expressed most spectacularly this week in Wisconsin’s capital — have brought to life a long-standing cliché of government: The most consequential political action and the most serious policy debates are not taking place in Washington, which appears unlikely to tackle any big-ticket items but, rather, beyond the Beltway, in the state capitols, which Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously labeled the “laboratories of democracy.”
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Let's see,... unions support Democrats by a significant margin. Unions work hard to keep Republicans out of office. Republicans won. Looks like the laboratory of democracy is functioning.
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