Protest continued today with state employees were renouncing proposed budget cuts, and now the Tea Party, well, they are getting set to jump into the fray. Barbara Pinto is live with the latest from the state capital in Madison good morning, Barbara.
Good morning, Bianna. The city has become the epicenter of the national debate over who suffers most when states run out of money. The protest has been going on for nearly a week here, and today those demonstrations are expected to get more intense and more polarizing. We are watching police officers are arrived here this morning, and that is because the Tea Party is staging a counter demonstration of its own today.
They are not leaving, camping out of the state house overnight, forging the streets with protests all day. Crowd of 40,000 paralyzed the capital on Friday, union workers upset with the governor's plan to slash their benefits in bargaining rights.
We are going to fight tooth and nail to make sure that we kill the bill.
The mass of crowds drew cameras and high profile support.
Still on the lam, all 14 democratic senators who fled the state to stall the vote, police search for them,but many hold up across the border in Illinois.
Given the magnitude of the legislation, the only option we had to slow things down, so people could be heard and read this thing, was to do what we did.
For Jim and Nancy Thomson, retired state workers, this budget battle is personal.
We’ve taken less pay for the benefits, so now simply to cut our benefits is just unjust and totally unfair.
Kim Lee who runs a small business is siding with the governor.
Let’s be serious about it and you can’t keep spending more than it’s coming in.
And the embattled governor is holding his ground.
We have bill collectors waiting for us to collect bills, and it’s time we step up and take care of the bills that we owe. We’re gonna do what it takes to get this budget on track.
Now last night there was a hint of compromise. The head of the largest public employees union agreed to cave in on cuts to pensions and health care if the governor agreed not to touch the collective bargaining rights, but the governor flatly declined. And that leaves no one here inside.
