How Wisconsin Republicans were able to pass the “budget-repair” bill

They removed the “budget-repair” part. The reason the Democrats left the state to begin with is because Wisconsin’s upper chamber can’t pass any fiscal bills without 3/5 of the members present, according to Senate rules. With the Democrats missing, Republicans lacked that 3/5 quorum, and couldn’t hold a vote. So, they simply stripped all fiscal provisions from the bill, eliminating the need for a 3/5 quorum, and passed it that way. What makes this extraordinarily slimy is that Governor Walker has insisted from the beginning that the bill’s purpose was to fix the state’s fiscal situation. Now, he and the Wisconsin GOP are implicitly admitting what everyone’s known all along: the bill wasn’t about fixing the budget. It was actually about busting up the unions. Good luck spinning the PR, Walker. You’ve done a bang-up job so far. source

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