Posted on 06/24/2010 9:03:10 PM PDT by Qbert
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) suggested Thursday that Democrats might attempt to move "card-check" legislation this year, perhaps during a lame-duck session.
Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, strongly disputed that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA, or "card-check") was dead in the Senate.
"To those who think it's dead, I say think again," Harkin said on the liberal Bill Press radio show.
"We're still trying to maneuver," the Iowa Democrat added, explaining that if Democrats can't move the bill in its entirety, they might try to pass key parts of the union-organizing legislation individually.
Harkin has been bullish on EFCA for some time now despite a number of signs over time that there might not be 60 votes in the Senate to move the legislation, with a number of centrist Democrats having balked at the legislation.
But while many in the labor community quietly concede that the bill won't move this Congress in its most robust form, Harkin has been talking up the legislation as recently as last week, in a speech to the United Auto Workers union.
The Iowa senator also raised the prospect on Thursday or trying to pass parts of the card-check bill during a lame-duck session of Congress at the end of the year.
"A lot of things can happen in a lame-duck session, too," he said in reference to EFCA.
A "lame-duck" session refers to the time Congress is in session after an election, during which members who might have retired or lost reelection still serve for roughly two months. Contentious legislation like EFCA is rarely moved during such a session, though the logic behind trying to move the labor bill during a lame-duck Congress is that lawmakers who might have opposed it for political purposes might be more inclined to support it.
A business group opposed to EFCA said on Thursday that Harkin must have missed the message from Arkansas, where labor groups spent millions to back a primary challenge to Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), only to come up short.
“It appears Senator Harkin might have missed the outcome of the Arkansas Senate runoff election earlier this month," said Workforce Fairness Institute executive director Katie Packer. "After spending over $10 million to elect Big Labor’s poster child Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter – who repeatedly claimed EFCA was ‘dead’ – the job-killing agenda advocated by union bosses was widely and unequivocally rejected by voters in Arkansas."
Our side is going to busy reversing and/or repealing much of this cr*p they are doing and will do.
The party of “Hell no!” Bring it on.
When will this pustule go away? Harkin is another senile gasbag who needed to retire looooong ago.
I don’t think I’ve ever said this in June before, but January can’t get here fast enough.
There are only a handfull of Conservative Republicans with the guts to attempt repealing any of what's been passed in the last 18 months.
Yeah, like an armed insurrection, Harkin.
Lame-Duck? I’m hoping for Shell-Shocked!
“There are only a handfull of Conservative Republicans with the guts to attempt repealing any of what’s been passed in the last 18 months.”
That’s going to have to change.
Here’s hoping the GOP (possibly reinforced by a few D’s coming up in two years in GOP-friendly states) has the guts to filibuster *everything* that the other side wants to push through the lame-duck session.
Keep quoting these RAT feces to the American people. Helps get out the vote so that we can defeat even more of these feces in November. Use their words and anti-American, anti-We The People arrogance against every single treasonous one of them.
“Helps get out the vote so that we can defeat even more of these feces in November.”
I sure as you-know-what hope so!
I really don’t think our country could survive another two years of Pelosi-Obama-Reid.
Then they will lead the way, and we should have a lot of new ones who are won their primaries on repealing these things.
It takes a RNC and GOP leadership to have the spine, guts, and gonads to go after the RATs dirt and expose each and every one of them including their corruption and collusion to destroy this country. Use their words, votes, and actions to send them packing. Expose them for the traitors they are and make their family name synonymous with treason to the end of time, e.g., Benedict Arnolds of our time. Disgrace them forever.
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