doing something he swore in the campaign he would never do. borrowing to balance his budget. taking $165 million that the state of wisconsin owes, he is taking, pulling it back, putting it in his budget, and borrowing to back fill a $165 million hole that will cost more in the end. are there any republicans thinking about siding with democrats on this issue? that may be the way this ends at this point. off the record? yes. i know. so i can t speak for them. off the record, yes, they are. they re very concerned about a couple of things. first of all, i know they approached the governor early onto try to make sure he removed the collective bargaining. he wouldn t do it. so they have all kind of held in line. so far, senator schultz did a great job trying to come to compromise on this. publicly, they are holding tight. they re under a lot of pressure, they re actually under more pressure than we are. wisconsin state senator jon erpenbach joining us from a location that looks sus
and actually very disappointed. they ve had probably 600,000 people in and out of madison in this past week, and i don t think there s been any arrests. there might have been a couple, but i don t think there have been. especially on the biggest day when i heard there were anywhere from 70,000 to 100,000 people there, including a tea party counterprotest and absolutely nobody was arrested. there wasn t any trouble that day. so i don t know what the governor is talking about. i don t know why the governor would want to do something like this. i know senator fitzgerald. i have a great deal of respect for him. and i don t think he d go for something like this. but to hear that out of the governor is very disturbing. senator erpenbach, the milwaukee journal sentinel s editorial says the two sides including 14 democrats hiding in illinois need to show some interest in doing their jobs, the democrats should end their strike and get back to work, they ve made their point. senator, what do
governor on the financial aspects of this, that all we re left with are the union-busting components where you want to strip the unions of their collective bargaining rights. the public is not with you on that, senator. isn t it time to reach a compromise on that? first of all, lawrence, let me say that senator erpenbach should come back to madison and get the work of the people done in the state senate. you know, when he offered universal health care to everyone last session, you know, i stood there on the floor and debated him. i totally disagreed with him philosophically on the issue. but every time he brought a bill to the floor i stood there. i offered my amendments. i made sure that we made our points. in the end i did the work of the people in the state senate. senator erpenbach and the other 13 democrat senators need to get
senator erpenbach, how long can you stay out? can you stay out into the summer? well, that s up to governor walker. and if scott and i have a lot of respect for scott. i know he s in a tough spot and he s got a tough job to do. and he s very fair to us usually. but the issue is the budget coming up next tuesday. that s the big budget that we re going to debate for three months. that s the budget that the collective bargaining language belongs in. that gives us a lot longer to debate the issue. it was going to be slammed through the legislature and signed into law within a week. so that s where that language actually belonged. i want to thank you both for joining us tonight, and i want to thank you both for the civil tone you ve maintained with each other, which looks to me like the wisconsin way senators treat each other. democratic state senator john erpenbach, and republican senate majority leader scott fitzgerald. the politician in america with my favorite name of any americ
army national guard. i believe he finally went public with this was because right from the beginning when he was first ordered to do this he had said it s a bad idea, it s a bad idea, it s a bad idea. in march of 2010 he received a written order. and then after the written order he then reported it to the lawyers. and again he was ignored. and then there was a retaliatory investigation against him. he then blew the whistle again and told the pentagon, hey, i just got retaliated against because i blew the whistle, and then the pentagon ignored it. so i think he was i think he felt that he was forced to go public with this because he just thought what was going on wasn t right. i want to read you what senator franken said today in response to this article and this specific trip that you point out in the article that senator franken was on in afghanistan. he said this in his statement although this was my first trip to afghanistan as a senator, it