K Street repub: “Public employee unions are going to get hosed, and they deserve to get hosed”

[pampango]

Collective Bargain; As Wisconsin goes, so goes the nation.

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/84501/wisconsin-unions-collective-bargaining

Last December, I asked a prominent K Street Republican what he thought his party’s top priority would be following its successes in the midterm elections. He didn’t mince words. “Public employee unions are going to get hosed, and they deserve to get hosed,” he told me. So, I wasn’t exactly surprised when Republican governors in Wisconsin and Ohio put the public unions in their states on a hit list. Not merely by trying to cut their wages and benefits, which several Democratic governors are also trying to do, but by trying to snuff out their very existence.

The governors themselves insist that, in depriving the unions of the right to bargain for their members, they will make it easier to balance state budgets. Never mind that the unions themselves have agreed to a pay and benefit cut, and that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker accompanied his bid to abolish collective bargaining with state business tax cuts of about $120 million. Of course, it’s possible that the governors believe that, in the future, they will be in a better position to reduce costs if they don’t have to bargain with unions. Still, it’s more likely that they’ve been motivated by an additional consideration.

Unfortunately, the rest of the article is only available to subscribers - which I'm not. The first two paragraphs tell a lot, though.

[eShirl]

1. k&r

[cognoscere]

2. Most Republican politicians deserve a pipe upside the head. N/T