Unbowed and unrepentant, 14 Democratic state senators returned to the Capitol on Saturday and received a tumultuous welcome from tens of thousands of pro-labor demonstrators.
Despite last week's passage of Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair bill, the senators said they did the right thing by fleeing to Illinois last month in an unsuccessful bid to block the legislation.And they vowed to fight the law in the courts and at the ballot box in a longer struggle to restore the collective bargaining that was eliminated for most public employees.
As they made their way up the steps of the Capitol, they heard the roars of a crowd that clogged Capitol Square, and listened as chants of "thank you, thank you" rained down.
But not everyone was happy to see the 14 Democratic senators back in Madison.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) issued a withering statement ahead of their return.
He called the senators "the most shameful 14 people in the state of Wisconsin" and said it was "an absolute insult" to hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites that the senators ran away to Illinois to block Walker's budget-repair bill.
Fitzgerald wrote: "To the Senate Democrats: when you smile for the cameras today and pretend you're heroes, I hope you look at that beautiful Capitol building you insulted. And I hope you're embarrassed to call yourselves senators."
The senators showed no such shame as they took the stage, one by one, and addressed the audience that fanned out on muddy ground and spilled out into State St. Other demonstrators kept up a continuous march in the square, the scene all playing out beneath cloudy skies and a brisk late-winter wind.
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3 comments:
Now they are back, hand them their walking papers. They walked away from their responsibilities so keep on walking.
They should all be fired and special elections held. they were elected to do a job not run away from their job. Anyone else would be fired if they walked off of their job and hid from it.
8:28 PM
exactly. and they still get paid for not doing any work. no reprimand at all for refusing to work.
on our side of the desk it's called no show, no call. then it's called you're fired!
but not these special ones. they think they're hero's or something. puke.
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