Today on Greg Sargent's blog he published a post entitled "Blue Dogs to House Dem Leaders: Hold Off On Employee Free Choice" acknowledged that:
Blue Dog Democrats in the House have asked House Dem leaders to postpone a vote on the Employee Free Choice Act until after the Senate votes on it, and the Democratic leadership has agreed, a senior House Dem aide tells me.
At the same time, they struggled with the fact that "The Blue Dogs don’t want to end up voting on something that won’t even become law. They’re saying, 'see what can get through the Senate first, and then we’ll vote on it.'"
This is completely ludicrous. Now that there is chance of its passage with the votes of Arlen Specter and other 'Moderate' Republicans (we need a nifty name for the three: Specter, Collins and Snowe; I call for the Three Amigos!) the Blue Dogs are muscling themselves into the debate to please their donors. But why are they doing this now? And what consequences might this have on the final bill?
More below the fold...
The coming battle over EFCA is going to make the Stimulus Bill look like a random drunken punch.
It is important to put into context what Big Business thinks about the EFCA and what the arguments, and the donations and public campaign this bill will take. So, to show the 'business-argument' let's go no further than the Wall Street Journal editorial "The Employee Free Choice Act is Unconstitutional" written by Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago, and a Senior Fellow at the appropriately named Hoover Institution:
A top priority of the incoming Democratic Congress and Obama administration is the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act. The EFCA, as is well known, introduces a card-check procedure that allows a union to gain recognition without an election by secret ballot. Thereafter a government arbitration panel can impose, without judicial review, all the terms of an initial two-year collective "agreement" if the parties cannot negotiate an agreement within 130 days.
It is commonly supposed that economic regulation is immune to constitutional challenge since the New Deal. That's not the case with this labor law.
Consider card check and the First Amendment. Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) today, an employer can insist upon a secret ballot after 30% of workers indicate by card checks their interest in a union. The campaign that follows lets the employer air his views about the downsides of unionization before the vote takes place.
To be sure, the employer's free-speech rights are limited under the NLRA. He cannot threaten to move or shut down if workers vote for the union. Nor can he promise higher wages if they don't. But he can make predictions of what will happen if his firm is unionized, and he can point to the reversal of worker fortunes in other unionized firms.
And in Forbes on the 10th of February he welcomed President Obama's 'silence' on EFCA, in which he calls the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act a 'pay-off'. While this silence isn't necessarily a truism since the President has absolutely no interest in getting involved in this legislation. That is up to Congress.
For a full throated analysis of the right's opposition to the EFCA, see http://papers.ssrn.com/... This is Working Paper No. 452, written by Mr. Epstein. It is the most complete argument, by far, to opposing labor unions in general, in addition to the further empowerment of union organizers.
With the news today that many Obama Campaign Staff are making their way to K-Street including his Political Director Matthew Nugen, National Delegate Coordinator Jeff Berman, and others, it will be interesting to note who voted for the bill in the last session as a matter of principle but will now pull that support due to the possibility of its actual passage. Seeing how these actors play in the game (siding with the unions v. corporations and what provisions they do or not not demand stripped or added). This will be a case where K-Street really will have a disproportionate impact on the end-piece of legislation. Especially since there are so many donor-interests to keep happy.
The cloture vote for the 2007 version of the Employees Free Choice Act from the key senators are as follows;
Susan Collins (R-ME)-Nay
Olympia Snowe (R-ME)-Nay
Arlen Specter (R-PA)-Aye
Joseph Lieberman (T (for Traitor)-I)-Aye
Tim Johnson (D-SD)-Not Present
Two Republican Senators that will be in a position to be pressured to vote for the bill are Senators Grassley and Vitter (especially from that propelling candidacy of Stormy Daniels)!
The question is, will they feel pressed enough to vote in the affirmative? Probably not. In which case we need to pick up the votes elsewhere. Since the Blue Dogs are basically holding the legislation hostage in the House, it's all up to the Senate.
Arlen Specter, for his 2010 race, may have to look long and hard at the fact that Building Trade Unions only gave more to one other candidate last cycle: Hillary Clinton. He received 79,000 from them. But it's not so much about receiving those funds. It's about not having his opponent flooded with union monies, which likely would happen if he voted against EFCA and it came up for a revote in the next Senate.
Tim Johnson missing that vote was unacceptable. The right, according to Town Hall, are looking at this through the lens of who they can influence, citing that states where the law of the land is 'Right to Work':
The real goal, of course, is not to be fair, but to unionize more workers. And, of course, the unions are ignoring people who bring up that idea -- because the vast majority of currently unionized workers never voted to enter a union, and the bosses are scared that they would get voted out.
So essentially they want to be able to harass you into signing a card to unionize yourself, then make it hard for you to get out of the deal when you figure out that you’ve been gamed. Yeah…that sounds like “Employee Free Choice” to me!
The Republicans are going to have to filibuster to stop this monstrosity from passing the Senate…meaning we need to hold at least 41 votes.
One Republican, Arlen Specter (PA), has already crossed to the dark side, and the unions claim they are going to put pressure on Olympia Snowe (ME) and George Voinovich (OH). We should definitely be contacting those three to encourage them to oppose this act.
But there are also a lot of Democrats from fairly conservative, right-to-work states whom we might be able to bring over as insurance.
The easiest will probably be Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln from Arkansas, Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan from North Dakota, Tim Johnson from South Dakota, and Ben Nelson from Nebraska. These states are all Right to Work states, which means the state legislatures -- and the population -- would most likely oppose this act (if they are made aware of it, that is).
Some other targets may include Senators Udall (CO), Salazar (CO), Warner (VA), Webb (VA), Bayh (IN), and Bill Nelson (FL). Virginia and Florida are both Right to Work states, by the way.
Of course, the ultimate goal of the pro-union forces are to support Democratic political causes. While 30-40 percent of union members are Republicans, the vast majority of union money goes to Democrats. As such, many union members are contributing financially to causes they abhor.
It’s going to be one heck of a fight trying to shoot this thing down, and we had better get on it now.
So, Ted Kennedy either (gasp!) needs to retire to ensure that we have that vote there for this important vote (I get that he's a lion, but if he can't fulfill his duties then he should resign), Franken needs to be seated, and complete party discipline in the Senate without stripping the major provisions of the legislation. I am sure that Hilda Solis will be a tireless advocate for the legislation, as she was in the House. It will be interesting to see who does or does not vote in the affirmative as a result of the legislation's possible passage.
What do you all think? What donor-implications for the blue-dogs will passage of this bill have? Do you think moderates in the House need to vote against it to bone up their moderate credentials (without the bill dying due to it)? What about Specter? How can we best apply pressure?