I am for Scott Walker.
I feel that he is not asking to much.
I strongley agree that all teachers should pitch in for thir share for pensions and Health premiums.

It is not just teachers, it is all public employees i.e. government employees, city employees, county workers, nurses etc. I agree with the concept, but not the way it is being handled.

Pitching in is not the issue. State employees have already taken what amounts to a 3-5% pay cut due to furlough days these past three years. Most are perfectly willing to pay more for their health insurance and retirement. Balancing the budget has nothing to do with not allowing the unions to negotiate on anything more than a small cost of living raise; or not taking union dues out of members paychecks, something that has been done for the past 60 years; or forcing the unions to undergo new elections every year to remain certified. None of that has anything to do with balancing the budget. Those are moves designed to break the unions. Furthermore I would have to ask why the strange coincidence that the two unions to endorse Walker, the police and firement's unions, are excempt from this? Also, Walker says he is doing this because the unions refuse to negotiate when the truth is he has never even tried, not once, to negotiate with the unions. Things might be different if he had tried and they refused to pitch in but that is simply not the case. FINALLY the state budget office says Wisconsin would have had a surplus this year if not for tax cuts Walker initiated for various corporations. So in essense he is financing his tax cuts for corporations by taking money from the state employees. If he did not have these new tax cuts the budget would be balanced WITH NO NEW TAXES or pay loss to the employees.

Stop with the Us against Them perpetuation please. This is about peoples freedoms and rights to bargain and negotiate. A simple notion most every American embraces. It isn't a matter of being for or against Mr. Walker, only his proposals. Most of us do not even know the man. If anyone thinks it unfair that state employees get better benefits than you, you all have the freedom and right to apply for a state job just as they did.

This is Scott Walker over stepping his office , changing laws to get what he wants. This is more about republicans taking away private citizen rights. I think Walker should be ousted, he is not serving the state of wisconsin, he is self serving. He has blinders on, he needs to be removed. He is only 2 months in and has already set 1 new law against wet lands protection, next is teachers, nurses and providers of our childrens protection and well being. It is already time for Walker to take a walk.

Just sit down and bargain in good faith!

I love our public servants, but they're wrong on this issue. Those of us in the private sector have been feeling the hurt of this economy for years now. Our state needs money and we have few alternatives. The best one, and the most fair for the most citizens in this state, is for public employees to contribute minimal amounts to their benefit packages.

I stand with our governor on this issue.

Just sit down and bargain in good faith!!

pay your own way like the rest of us! we pay for our own pensions and health care. no free rides
be glad to even have a job.

There has never been a labor contract that didn't have two signatures on it; one representing the workers and the other by management. It collective bargaining is to be blamed for labor costs being too high, or benefits being out of step, then management must take the blame, too. The same thing applies to the claimed impossibility to fire public sector workers. The fault is weak-willed managers, whose own lack of accountability dissuades them from doing their jobs.

Gov. Walker is signaling that he is too weak to bargain and manage successfully.

Well said Gary

Governor Walker has made a huge mistake. This has nothing to do with paying their fair share of benefits. This is about destroying the unions.

Walker is a liar, a cheat and a pandering puppet to big corporations and his rich allies. The pensions and insurance concessions are not entirely unreasonable, but Walker's sneakier, more threatening attack is on workers' rights to organise and join unions. Without the unions' collective bargaining rights, workers are left at the mercy of their employers.
Do you enjoy your weekends, your 40-hour work-week and the fact that your 8 year old doesn't work in a factory? Then THANK A UNION. Unions protect and negotiate for their members. Unions give power to the workers who might otherwise be taken advantage of by their more powerful bosses.
This is setting up to be the biggest setback for American labor in years.
DOWN WITH WALKER.

New for all you peope against the bill.

Scott Walker is not doing away with the union
He wants to do what is right and I do believe this should of been done along time ago.
If anyone put us in this mess is Doyle

I'm not for Walker, or the unions, I'm for the taxpayer. It seems so often that elected officials treat tax revenues as "their" money to collect and distribute, the recipients of that tax money become the main (and most vocal) constituents, and the benefactor--the tapayer--gets lost in the din. I am mystified as to how an elected official believes that they should represent the views of anyone other than the people who elected them.

I have not heard a single argument from protesters (or the group camped out in Illinois) that somehow their position serves the interests of the taxpayers. I have not heard a single argument from a Democratic leslator that their position serves the majority of the electorate that put them there. It clearly serves the "public servants," who are a small minority of the elecorate (I think it's about 350,000 people out of 5,000,000 voters in Wisconsin).

No one wants a pay cut, much less an unfavorable change in the balance of power with their employer. But the reality is that it's happened in the private sector for the past several years, and that it's happening in the public sector is simply an extension of the economic realities we face as a state and as a nation.

Perhaps there is some middle ground to be found here, and hopefully the quality of discourse improves to something greater than sloganeering, jeering and namecalling by a small minorty acting on greed and self-interest.

Recall Scott Walker? After first year in office you can decide --- see http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_124743020921480&ap=1

Much venom and misinformation is being spewed for no good reason. Elected officials are signing legislation into law. The bill will pass in it's current form. Total compensation of the public sector has needed to be brought into alignment with total compensation for the private sector for decades. This is only a small, but much needed step in that direction. The voters decided this, not Governor Walker or the legislature. Democracy is at work. Anyone who thinks that this a part of some hidden agenda is kidding themselves. This is nothing more than a mandate from informed voters. Elections are held every two years, the last time that I checked.