It'd be nice to have a summary ;)
But I am seriously annoyed at how many people take stances on the bill without really knowing what it's doing (myself included). I'm watching the news and reading the articles and all they report on is the protests. They don't actually say what's really going on with the bill. Maybe if people were educated better...
"Tezzy" wrote:
Admittedly, I am still taking this all in. He wants to balance the budget, though Wisconsin's budget apparently isn't as bad as most other states. If it werent for Walker's tax breaks, it would be a surplus for this year.
From what I understand, the bill also would force union workers to pay a higher share of health costs and pensions, which seems reasonable IMO. What has the union protesting is Walker wants to take away or limit union's rights to negotiate on anything outside of their wages. In a nutshell, getting rid of collective bargaining is what is driving the protest.
But this seems more political than it does about balancing the budget. I'm not sure collective bargaining adds a dime. It is just the right to negotiate from what I understand. Most unions are pro democrat and if he can take away their rights, it is a big blow for them heading into 2012.
Also, the only exceptions are firefighters, police, and state troopers. All those organizations supported Walker in the 2010 election.
He isn't doing anything the democrats wouldn't do themselves, which is try to gain an upper advantage politically for his party, but he did criticize the health care bill process and that was debated for like a year in a half. This has been public for like a week.
For the record, don't buy into fox news highlighting protesters saying Walker is Hitler and all that crap. Yeah, there are some because there is no such thing as 30,000 normal or levelheaded people in one place at a time. Madison police did say that the protests have been peaceful thus far, so I'll take their word for it.