Applause for Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) for siding with her constituents and against the Employee Free Choice Act.

From The Hill, Briefing Room, “Sen. Lincoln Will Not Support ‘Card Check’”

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) said Monday she will vote against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), marking a major Democratic defection to the effort to pass the highly-prized union bill.

“I cannot support that bill,” Lincoln said during a speech before the Little Rock Political Animals Club, according to the Arkansas Business News. “Cannot support that bill in its current form. Cannot support and will not support moving it forward in its current form.”

The Associated Press is also reporting that Lincoln announced her opposition to the bill, which is strongly desired by organized labor.

The “current form” phrasing allows wiggle room, true, but the serial nature of Senator Lincoln’s sentence emphasizes her opposition.

The original ArkansasBusiness.com report is here.

UPDATE (4:05 p.m.): Sam Stein at Huffington Post writes, “In what is, perhaps, the most devastating blow yet to the fate of the Employee Free Choice Act, Sen. Blanche Lincoln said on Monday that she will oppose the union-backed legislation.” Meanwhile, Eddie Vale of the AFL-CIO says, “It’s not dead yet. It’s getting better.” Or words to that effect.

Gee, after we say something passingly nice about the left-wing advocacy group OMB Watch, they attack two Senators for daring to challenge the death tax:

Long Overdue Outrage Over the Anti-Estate Tax Crowd

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post ran lead editorials this morning denouncing the attempt of Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) to give yet another tax cut to the children of the very richest Americans. Both editorials are spot on and raise excellent points about why Sens. Lincoln and Kyl seem to be both out of touch and out of their minds. In fact, both editorials express far more outrage and disdain for this proposed tax cut than I’ve ever seen before in any newspaper. (Read the Times and Post editorials.)

(Adam Hughes 04/02/09)

“Out of their minds.” OK, here’s the testmony of Eugene Sukup, chairman of the board of Sukump Manufacturing Company in Sheffield, Iowa, speaking at a November 2007 hearing of the Senate Finance Committee.

I’m not bragging when I tell you that businesses like Sukup Manufacturing are the backbone of our economy. By the same token, when a business like ours is sold off or shuttered, the loss to the economy is great. If Sukup closed today, 350 people would lose their jobs. But, that’s just the beginning. Without jobs, there’s no reason for a child care center. As people move on to other places, the restaurants and stores close down, the dentist moves to a bigger city with more customers. The loss would be felt in Iowa, in Arkansas, in South Dakota.

Now, to be clear, we’re a growing company. So, why would we close down or sell off? I’m here today to tell you that one of the greatest threats to our family-owned business is the estate tax. If my wife Mary and I died today, we estimate that our estate tax liability would be somewhere between $15 and $20 million dollars. The only way for my sons to pay that tax would be to sell off the business.

Folks will tell you that you can “avoid” the tax. Well, maybe that’s true in some cases, but it also involves extremely high financial planning costs including expensive life insurance policies that businesses pay year in and year out. Money that we put into life insurance policies and other financial planning tools to avoid the tax is money that we could have been putting into the business – hiring more employees and expanding into other states.  

Any insults about mental health you want to throw his way? Mr. Sukup is, after all, a member of the “anti-estate tax crowd.”

We bet most of his employees are, too.

Hah. Despite union reports that the Employee Free Choice Act would be introduced next Monday …

From the People’s Weekly World, “Update: Employee Free Choice Act to be introduced in Congress“:

(Editor’s note: PWW reporters at the AFL-CIO executive council meeting indicate that the report that the Employee Free Choice Act will be introduced on March 9 is incorrect. According to union sources, the bill will be introduced later in the month).

As suggested below, PWW reporters pay attention to details and are conscientious (in service of an evil cause, Communism, but still, credit where credit due). We tend to believe them more than the union blusterers.

In what’s probably related news/commentary, from Arkansas: “Is Lincoln shifting on EFCA?”

UPDATE (9:40 a.m.): More evidence of union confusion on the issue. Yesterday, the Los Angeles AFL-CIO’s website said introduction would be next Monday:

Street Dialing for Good Jobs
Join us as we phone bank Senator Feinstein from the streets of L.A. in support of the Employee Free Choice Act

On Monday, March 9th Congressman George Miller and Senator Ted Kennedy are expected to introduce the Employee Free Choice Act into the House of Representatives.

Today it says:

On the week of March 9th Congressman George Miller and Senator Ted Kennedy are expected to introduce the Employee Free Choice Act into the House of Representatives.

Don’t want to get caught up in too much of the insider ball game here. The Employee Free Choice Act is an attack on secret ballot elections, good jobs and managerial prerogative no matter whether the bill is introduced March 9th or March Xth. The question of dates is interesting just as a reflection of labor’s disarray and confused leadership.

UPDATE: (10 a.m.): “President Tells Unions Organizing Act Will Pass“:

MIAMI — President Barack Obama told AFL-CIO union leaders Tuesday in a videotaped address that the controversial Employee Free Choice Act will pass, signaling his full backing for legislation that makes union organizing easier.

“We will pass the Employee Free Choice Act,” President Obama told more than 100 top labor officials in a closed-door meeting at the labor federation’s winter gathering in Miami, according to people at the meeting.

The remarks were taped February 20th, so they’d have to be generic statements of support.

UPDATEThe Hill:

Democratic aides said lawmakers have not yet picked a day for when to introduce the bill.

“We have not made a decision on timing for introduction of the bill,” said Aaron Albright, spokesman for the House Education and Labor Committee. Miller (D-Calif.) is chairman of the committee.

From AP Arkansas, “Lincoln: ‘Card-check’ proposal not necessary“:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – Sen. Blanche Lincoln said Tuesday she doesn’t believe federal legislation that would allow labor organizations to unionize workplaces without secret-ballot elections is necessary, but gave herself room to support the measure if it’s brought up later.

Business and labor groups are pressuring the Democratic senator from Arkansas for support either way, and Tim Griffin, a potential challenger to the senator’s 2010 re-election bid, has said her stand could be an issue in the race.

We don’t find the full AP immediately online, but here are key quotes and excerpts from Senator Lincoln:

“I think the question is, is there a need for this legislation right now? And for multiple reasons, I don’t think there is,” Lincoln said in an interview with The Associated Press….

Lincoln said that the majority of efforts to unionize workers are successful anyway and that the nation has bigger problems to deal with.

“I don’t see this bill as being the solution to those problems, and I don’t see us focusing on that bill as helping us to solve those problems,” Lincoln said. “If what we want to do is strengthen our economy, create jobs, create a better working environment for working families and workers in this country and create a better environment for business to be successful, then it’s not focusing on the Employee Free Choice Act.”

Lincoln said she thinks the act has “room for improvement,” and indicated she’d be more open to talking about the measure once other issues are addressed first.

“Just to bring this up and say this is going to solve problems, we try really hard to not do things that way,” Lincoln said. “The point is, we try to go through the hearing process, which is what we’ve tried to do on health care and tax reform and other things we’ve had all these hearings on.”

That’s an excellent assessment of the state of play, from which we infer that organized labor’s priorities aren’t the nation’s priorities. It’s especially gratifying to see Senator Lincoln acknowledge that unions win a majority of representation elections, more than 60 percent in 2007.

Meanwhile, The Hill reports that Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) is sticking to his guns, declaring, “To just have a situation where somebody can go out there and get X number of cards and then say, ‘By the way, we’ve got 50-plus-one, now you’re unionized’ — it’s undemocratic.”

UPDATE (11:30 a.m.): Brian Faughnan at The Weekly Standard does some Senate vote-counting and finds the 60 votes for cloture more difficult to reach. Beware the faux compromise, though.

(Note: NAM’s Executive Vice President Jay Timmons is blogging from the National Democratic Convention in Denver this week.)

The capstone event the NAM team attended on Wednesday was a reception hosted by the Third Way Democrats. Third Way is a group of thoughtful policy professionals who believe partisan politics get in the way of creative solutions.

NAM is a proud supporter of Third Way. Although we won’t always totally see eye-to-eye on all issues, the organization is one of the few in Washington willing to look past campaign rhetoric in order to bring together non-traditional allies to devise policy proposals to help real people in the real world, and make America more competitive.

Senator Tom Carper (DE) was in attendance. NAM’s CEO, John Engler, worked closely with Senator Carper when the two were Governors. That productive relationship has extended into their new leadership roles as they have collaborated on common sense proposals to reform our litigious legal system in order to reduce the cost of doing business in the United States.

Senator Blanche Lincoln (AR), another attendee, is expected to be a major player in the next Congress when tax reform proposals are offered. Senator Lincoln has a history of reaching out to stakeholders, and the NAM expects to work closely with the Senator and her staff next year on tax policies that will enable U.S. manufacturers to better compete and succeed against our major trading partners.

Free trade, in particular, is an area where the Third Way can make an extraordinarily positive impact next year. The NAM has been actively working with the group to craft meaningful proposals to advance pending trade agreements, pursue new agreements that would open additional markets to U.S. products, reduce non-tariff barriers, and enforce our existing agreements.

Third Way is clearly in touch with members of their party: Fully 62 percent of Democrats say they benefit from free trade, according to a nationwide poll conducted by the Consumer Electronics Association this month. Data released today by the Commerce Department explains why this perception is a reality. Second quarter Gross Domestic Product figures show a stronger than expected 3.3 percent annual rate of increase in real GDP. Exports contributed 1.65 percentage points of that 3.3 percent growth. And “net exports” (trade balance – exports minus imports) contributed 3.1 percentage points of that 3.3 percent growth, because real imports (price-adjusted) fell.

Third Way Democrats understand free trade works. Hopefully their philosophy and the realities of the positive impact of free trade will prevail after the campaign rhetoric subsides.