Capitol Hill "Kochapalooza" Backfires

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

“Wherever Scott Walker goes, he needs to know that we’re going to be there waiting for him,” said IFPTE President Greg Junemann at a demonstration outside yesterday’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing at which the controversial Wisconsin governor appeared. “The people of Wisconsin did not vote for his agenda,” said the proud Wisconsin native. The House Republicans’ plan to use the hearing to give Walker and the National Right to Work Committee – More than half of the Republican committee members, including Chairman Darrell Issa, are recipients of funds from the anti-union Koch brothers -- a national stage to attack workers’ rights under the guise of fixing broken state budgets backfired when Walker found himself the subject of some tough questioning from Committee members. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), forced Walker to admit that several anti-union provision in his controversial “budget repair bill” had nothing to do with balancing the state’s budget. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D), strongly objected to “efforts by politicians who try to use the current economic downturn to strip American workers of their rights” and called such efforts “shameful.” And despite Walker’s best efforts to dodge the question, he finally had to admit to Rep. Gerry Connelly (D-Va.) that he’d never even brought up repealing workers’ collective bargaining rights during his campaign for governor.  Eleanor Holmes Norton (D., DC) excoriated Walker for turning a deaf ear to the workers in his state, and even fellow witness Pete Shumlin, Governor of Vermont, chided his colleague, saying that “If you want to go after collective bargaining, just come out and say it, but if you want to balance your budget, you bring people together, you have a dialogue.” Outside the hearing, some two dozen demonstrators chanted “Hey Walker you can’t hide, we can see your corporate side” and “Tax Wall Street, not Main Street” across the street from the Rayburn House Office Building, drawing interest from passing tourists and a speedy response from Capitol Police, who threatened to arrest the demonstrators and quickly dispersed the “unpermitted demonstration” organized by National Nurses United, whose nurses at Washington Hospital Center are still battling for a contract. Ann Louise Tetrault, a nurse from Wisconsin, was booted from her seat in the hearing by a Republican committee staffer before the hearing began, and Union City reporter/photographer Chris Garlock was ejected from the hearing entirely. “What corporate America is trying to do to unions is unfair, is unjust and unnecessary and we can’t tolerate it,” said Vicki Carroll, a labor and delivery nurse at the Washington Hospital Center. includes reporting by Mike Hall on the AFL-CIO Now blog and Chris Garlock, with photos by Garlock