Free Republic

State Sen. Tim Cullen, D-Janesville (left), says he proposed a constitutional amendment partly to prevent others from stalling legislation as Senate Dems did last month and partly as an olive branch to Republicans upset over the tactic. The amendment would remove a 20-member quorum requirement for fiscal bills. Cullen, along with the 13 other Senate Dems, fled to Illinois last month to prevent a vote on a budget repair bill that stripped nearly all collective bargaining rights for most public employees. Cullen, a former Senate majority leader, said he fears they have now set a precedent whereby the practice could...

Senate Dems late tonight sought to downplay Minority Leader Mark Miller’s comments that they plan to return to the Capitol soon for a vote on the budget repair bill to put their GOP colleagues on record in the face of polls that show the legislation is not sitting well with the public. Miller told the Wall Street Journal that moving forward with a vote on the budget repair will would give Dems more leverage in seeking changes to the 2011-13 budget the guv released earlier this week. But a Miller spokesman and two of his Dem colleagues insisted nothing has...

Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Waunakee, steps off the elevator to his latest hideout, a downtown Chicago hotel room he found for eighty bucks a night on Priceline.com. He steps into the hotel’s lime-green and gold lobby and makes a beeline for the free coffee and Kleenex. “I gotta blow my nose,” he says, and blows. Life on the run hasn’t been exactly glamorous for Erpenbach and the 13 other Democratic senators who fled Wisconsin Feb. 17 to prevent a vote on Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial budget repair bill. Their strategy relies on Senate rules that require a quorum of 20 legislators...