DLCC Chair Gronstal Condemns Wisconsin GOP Senate Vote

Iowa Senate Majority Leader Calls on Democratic Leaders to Join Him in Denouncing GOP Blitz Attack

Washington, DC- Today Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee Chair and Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal condemned Wisconsin’s Republican legislators who participated in last night’s ambush vote to decimate workers’ rights.

“I’m outraged at the Wisconsin Senate Republicans’ betrayal of working families,” said Sen. Gronstal. “While Wisconsin Democratic senators chose to take a stand for workers’ rights, Gov. Walker and his state Senate cronies used parliamentary trickery to crush those same rights.

“Last night’s legislative ploy is the culmination of months of effort by Republican Governor Scott Walker and his GOP accomplices in the state legislature to achieve purely political goals that have nothing to do with good governing. After Republicans took control of state government, they flipped Wisconsin from a forecasted budget surplus to a massive deficit. The Wisconsin GOP manufactured a budget crisis by giving mammoth tax breaks to their campaign donors and friends, then exploited the situation to obliterate the rights of Wisconsin workers.

“Democratic legislators in Wisconsin and across the country are fighting to balance state budgets in the face of the Great Recession. But Democrats know that budget cuts shouldn’t be a knife in the back of working families. I call on Democratic leaders everywhere, at every level, to join me in denouncing the sort of cynical, power-play politics that Republicans executed in Wisconsin last night. Policy-making by deception is a brand of politics Democrats cannot tolerate.”

###