Blogging Blue

My new favorite Republican lawmaker (as if I have many) is Republican State Senator Carol Roessler of Oshkosh. Senator Roessler is the first Republican to “fly the coop,” breaking with Assembly Republicans on spending cuts they want to make in state prisons and in the reserve fund used to give state employees pay raises. Senator Roessler’s break from the Republican Party line makes a state employee like yours truly very happy.

Senator Roessler said Senate Republicans should not agree to the Assembly GOP’s plan to hire private companies to provide medical care for inmates, to not hire 50 new prison guards and to abolish the jobs of 40 jobs of prison unit managers. Considering Senator Roessler’s district includes Oshkosh Correctional Institution and a number of other correctional centers, it’s nice to see she came down on the side of so many of her constituents in rejecting a budget that would have had a negative impact on many state employees.

Hopefully this is just the first Republican defection, because there has to come a point where Republicans finally realize no matter how hard they fight they’re not going to win the budget battle. Sure, they may win a few small victories here and there, but they’re not going to win the larger fight, especially not with Governor Jim Doyle wielding the famed “Frankenstein Veto”.

Click here to see the text of Senator Roessler’s letter to Republican Senate leader Scott Fitzgerald

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 at 12:36 pm and is filed under News, Wisconsin Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.