the cuts that the governor s about to announce on tuesday. there s going to be massive cuts to education and to shared revenue. the money we send to local levels of government. and senator erpenbach knows that. he knows that on tuesday the other shoe s going to drop and if we don t have that flexibility at the local level we re never going to be able to solve this $3.6 billion deficit. senator fitzgerald, one of the shoes that sรง going to dro pardon extending this metaphor, is in your wife s direction. she is a schoolteacher as i understand it. she s one of the people who s received a layoff notice. she is under threat from the governor to be laid off next week. is your wife overpaid in her job? you know, she s not under threat. the layoffs that the governor s talking about is at the state level. i mean, she is a school high school counselor at a small school, and there are many layoffs going out amongst the
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 back to madison and get the job done. the collective bargaining part has costs associated with it. we all know that. there s something that they re on denial on there. there are local city councils, school boards, county boards that are going to need the flexibility of the elimination of these collective bargaining items to be able to work through
capitol remain safe and secure and kind of you know, we re able to put together a contingency plan in case something would happen. now, it s just the opposite of what we ve been discussing with the governor. we want to make sure everyone s safe at the end of the day. senator erpenbach, are you surprised to hear the governor talking about, thinking about sending in troublemakers? extremely surprised. 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 d
back to madison and get the job done. the collective bargaining part has costs associated with it. we all know that. there s something that they re on denial on there. there are local city councils, school boards, county boards that are going to need the flexibility of the elimination of these collective bargaining items to be able to work through the cuts that the governor s about to announce on tuesday. there s going to be massive cuts to education and to shared revenue. the money we send to local levels of government. and senator erpenbach knows that. he knows that on tuesday the other shoe s going to drop and if we don t have that flexibility at the local level we re never going to be able to solve this $3.6 billion deficit. senator fitzgerald, one of the shoes that s going to drop, pardon extending this metaphor, is in your wife s direction. she is a schoolteacher as i understand it. she s one of the people who s received a layoff notice. she is under threat from the governor to
bargaining the tables have been tipped in favor of the unions. and we re just trying to pull that back a little bit. we re trying to bring that level playing field back so that mayors and school boards and county board members can get a fair shake when they walk up to the table. that s really what this is about right now. senator erpenbach, you just heard senator fitzgerald say that teachers aren t part of the problem, which i m sure makes for more domestic tranquility at home. but this has been, it seems, nothing but an attack on the collective bargaining rights of teachers unions, of other public employee unions in the state of wisconsin. the label is that they are the problem, they re our problem in the state budget. well, they aren t the problem in the state budget at all. obviously, two sides sit down and negotiate. democrat governors and