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Maybe States Could Just Swap Their Senators

Guest post by: Michael Hume

Article Overview: See, with SWEEP, Wisconsin and Illinois could actually swap senators. Never mind that voters elected them in different places (heck, when has what the voters wanted ever stood in the way of progressive hope and change?)... what matters is that everybody's drinking beer and voting with people they completely agree with. I'm sure there must be a commensurate number of minority Republican state senators in Illinois who'd be happy to commute to Madison to provide a quorum, and to have some beers with other Republicans....

Maybe States Could Just Swap Their Senators

Let's Just SWEEP Our Pesky Problems Away By now, everyone's heard all about the shenanigans in Wisconsin. You know: the state senators from one party, suddenly finding themselves in the minority in the wake of last November's tsunami-like elections, decided to deny a procedural quorum to the majority party by - I know, right? - running away. True story! "I got an idea, eh?" one of them probaby said. "Let's put down THESE beers, eh, and go over to Illinois and drink THEIR beers for awhile. Then there won't be no quorum, and the governor won't be able to jam up our union donors. I mean, you know, union leaders in this fair state."

The others probably drained their beers and jumped off their bar stools. "Beauty!" they undoubtedly shouted, and bolted for their cars (or, as some news reports indicated, taxpayer-funded taxi rides).

In distant Colorado, I worried (along with many others across the nation) about this shady tactic, and about how the citizens and taxpayers would be denied their right to govern Wisconsin through peaceful elections. I worried even more when teachers and other public employees took time off, dragged their students with them to the capitol to protest "whatever this dude is trying to do" (real quote from a kid who was joining the protest against Governor Scott Walker), and even got doctors to write them phony sick-notes to allow them to hold their party in the capitol building without fear of being busted back at work. (Sometimes I wish I could run my own business the way the public sector unions run theirs, at taxpayer expense.)

But I also worried a little about Illinois. I mean, seriously, the last thing that state needs is a few more liberal Democrat politicians.

Then it hit me: what about an exchange program?

When I was a teenager, I had to get school-board approval to become an exchange student to my own home school, because my parents had moved our house across the county line and into another district. We eventually moved back over the line, but for a while there, my attendance was swapped with that of another kid who needed the opposite arrangement - living in the county where my school was, but riding the bus back to the county where my house was. Great story for another time, but for the moment it served as my inspiration for this awesome idea I'll call the State Senator and Wisconsin Egotists Exchange Program (or, "SWEEP," since all government programs must have a cool acronym).

See, with SWEEP, Wisconsin and Illinois could actually swap senators. Never mind that voters elected them in different places (heck, when has what the voters wanted ever stood in the way of progressive hope and change?)... what matters is that everybody's drinking beer and voting with people they completely agree with. I'm sure there must be a commensurate number of minority Republican state senators in Illinois who'd be happy to commute to Madison to provide a quorum, and to have some beers with other Republicans.

SWEEP would allow Wisconsin to balance its budget by making slight, reasonable trims to the luxurious pay and benefit packages received by such public employees as teachers (who, in Wisconsin, receive top-notch union-demanded benefits along with average salaries over $70,000 per year). This is what the majority of Wisconsin voters wanted, so the voters won't complain; they want their teachers to make as much as the state can afford, but need to keep from paying them so much the state goes broke. The union's political bosses will be quite peeved - but then, those folks are never happy, so nothing would change. Meanwhile, in Illinois, the Democrat majority would be strengthened, and their unions would get even more favorable legislation (and even more dues money to contribute to Democrat candidates and causes)... and that's what a majority of that state's voters evidently want.

So as long as everybody's as willing to agree to sneaky tricks as are those few Wisconsin minority-party senators, and as long as nobody's too upset about silly things like state and federal constitutions and "the rules," why, everybody can be happy! And when the union-controlled states go belly-up under the weight of their runaway spending, why, the feds can borrow more money from China (or print more in Washington) to bail them out.

Beauty!

What state will yours swap senators with?

Here, where this brilliant plan is being written about, our state senator is a minority-party member of the Colorado Senate. I bet she'd be happy to work out an exchange with a state senator in, say, New Mexico. It'd send her to Santa Fe (which is a great weekend destination in these parts, with outstanding food and very cool art galleries), and bring some minority-party senator from New Mexico north to hang out with his or her buddies in the Mile High City, where they have great stuff you can't find in New Mexico such as high-speed rail and Major League baseball. And, of course, each would now be part of a very strong majority, with all the benefits such political polarization promises.

No more fighting. No quibbling or quarreling. No need for personal responsibility, or to sit down and hash out legitimate differences in reasonable tones. No, it could be P.A.T.T. - Party All The Time! Kinda like we see in the news clips from the state capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin these days.

This may be an idea whose time has come. Times are very tough, and everyone knows it. And as Wisconsin's state senators have shown us, when the going gets tough, the tough want to get going... across the state line, to a place where folks might just be more amenable to your brand of shenanigans.

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