have the best interest of the taxpayers in mind or did politics prevail in these decisions. martha: that is the question, isn tst? joined by byron york, chief political correspondent for the washington examiner. good morning. martha: what do you expect to happen? it s going to be kind of tough. there are really three separate issues that chu has to face, the first is the fact was of the solyndra case, what were the communications between seoul ind and the white house and the energy department, did the energy department try to pressure them to hold off on a layoff notice until after last year s elections. that s the first thing. the second is there s a whiff of a coverup, have they been telling the truth about the contacts, have they told congress everything, has it been accurate. the last thing is this bigger question of loan guarantee, are they really the best bang for the buck for the taxpayers. we ve heard so many stories of billions of dollars of loan guarantees for clean energ
alisyn: we re good to about to get new reaction to a bold move out of the motor city. detroit s mayor, taking an aggressive stance against public unions in an effort to cut $200 million of red ink, and one of his biggest targets is teachers. more than 5000 layoff notices, sent out to employees last week. steve johnson is president of the federation of teachers. good morning, mr. johnson. good morning, how are you? alisyn: i m well. but you must be concerned this morning, because every single teacher in the detroit public school received a layoff notice last week, basically putting them on notice that come september they could be out of a job unless you all strike some sort of deal with the city s mayor. are you going to agree to more cuts, or are teachers going to be fired? well, let s do a little bit of correction here. it actually is not the mayor that issues the layoff
supposed to function. this man presided over the body and lectured us about senate rule and and really kind of forced the hand of many a minority over the time saying that we were not not allowed to be heard. it s just amazing to hear that come out of snared riss senator risser s mouth. i m going to pry a tad into your personal hear. i heard that your wife is a school counselor and basically the action that you re taking now is one of the reasons she just got a a layoff notice did. she? and if so, is she still talking to you? yeah, that s true. no, it is. it s personal. and this is happening in many families. you re right, my wife is a high school counselor. and there s a good chance she could lose her job over this. but you know, she s also a true believer in what we re doing. she understands that this is about our future and about balancing the budget. and, you know, she s a great woman, and as a result of that, she s been very strong. senator, you and i had a fun
focused on. i mean, we want to make sure that we protect education by allowing them to guarantee these cost savings. which i think the governor did today. the other shoe has dropped, and he demonstrated that this part was important to the overall budget process. and i think that ultimately that s what we re driving to drive home, that this is a budget that will put wisconsin back on the right track fiscally. senator fitzgerald, i d love to focus on the nexus between education and collective bargaining issues. it actually comes home for you. am i right your wife is a high school guidance counselor, is that right? yeah, that s right. she did receive a layoff notice this past week. and there s been a lot of focus on it because i think it s typical of what we re seeing in other areas of the state, that if we don t come up with a solution for these cuts that you are going to see statewide teacher layoffs, along with county workers and municipal workers. so this is this is definitely
counselor at a local high school, has been there for many years and she received the layoff notice like many other teachers throughout the state. listen, i m hopeful that once the budget is announced at 4:00pm today that people will see that the changes to collective bargaining, the elimination of some of those items under collective bargaining will offset the cuts that the governor is about to announce and will embolden and empower the school boards and county boards and the mayor throughout the states to deal with these reduction. jon: the layoff notice that your wife and so many other teachers received actually would take effect next year, as i understand it? yeah it would be the next school year. they are required to send out notices to anyone who might not have a renewed contract. but it s a good reminder for myself and many others that this is real, and that, you know, we re going to try and deal with this budget deficit right now. jon: all right. scott fitzgerald, the majority