fiscal measures out of that bill. so they didn t need any of the democrats to be there to vote on this thing. so i have now on the line with me one of those 14 state senators, democrats, jim holperin. a really easy question, where are you? are you still in illinois or headed home. no, i m headed home to the 12th senate district in far northern wisconsin. why are you headed home now? we left wisconsin as a group a couple weeks ago so that we could make sure the public understood just what the budget repair bill in wisconsin was all about. it wasn t about just balancing the budget. it was will eliminating rights for workers, the right to organize and negotiate and bargain collectively. we think we achieved that. beyond that, we thought a compromise was possible. the governor said he wanted to balance the budget. we thought that had begun using the sacrifices of public workers who agreed to concessions. but we thought that could be
little bit of it open. that s when the scene got incredibly tense and people push and shoving and some of the police officers were involved in that as well and that he is kes into a tense situation. for a great portion of this morning the capitol building has been on lockdown. many people got in this morning and after a few hours they said no one else would be allowed in, even a couple of state legislators trying to get into the assembly meeting were turped away. now we ve been told that there s one of the doors around the corner here has been opened up and people will start filing in. you can get a sense of how many thousands of protesters are here on the capitol grounds in madison. they ve been coming in because of last night s move by the republicans to pass the budget repair bill, at least the portion of the bill that strips away most collective bargaining rights and forces public sector workers to pay more towards
of the things we ve been complaining about. if the hearings are going on and it s good that it s highlighting an issue, but let s work together to see how we can have an impact. daisy, thanks for being with us. we appreciate you coming on and talking to viewers about that. i nt with a to quickly remind you about a cnn in america special, the fight over the construction of a mosque in the heart of the bible belt. called unwelcome, the muslims next door. debut sunday march 27th at 8:00 p.m. these are not live pictures, this is from earlier. remember the standoff over the budget repair bill that was going to strip workers of bargaining rights, last night the state senate republicans passed the bill on their own after taking out a few fiscal provisions that required a larger quorum. this is how it s going over.
you respond to the people who say you didn t do your job, you bailed, you left town for three weeks? this was a very, very divisive issue, and i hear loud and clear the people who believe that we abdicated our responsibility to go and vote, and yet we have to say to those folks, if we had done that, if we had lost immediately that week, i think even they would have been shocked to discovered what was in that so-called budget repair bill and they would have been surprised and i think disappointed to not be given an opportunity to react to the bill. we provided the opportunity to respond, and yes, we delayed the inevitable by a couple weeks, but i think we did focus attention on it and we gained by that. i have to ask, you are is the first of the 14 democrats to head back to wisconsin. are your other colleagues following suit? or are any of them staying in illinois?
illinois, tweaked a so-called budget repair bill just enough to get around a requirement for a 20-member quorum. the measure still contains everything the democrats and organized labor late. it would allow public employees to negotiate wages only, not working conditions or anything else. it would limit pay raises to the inflation rate unless there s a public referendum. it would sharply increase worker contributions to health care and pension funds and workers in fact, have already agreed to that, and it would bar unions from taking dues straight from members paychecks. politically it is a powder keg. legislatively it bears zero resemblance to anything you learned in the civics is class or schoolhouse rock. is the state assembly rushed the bill through in five seconds while most democrats were out of the chamber. the assembly has to vote again on the senate changes but that is a foregone conclusion. now democrats are claiming republicans have broke the state s open meetings law and bot