LOSING NEVER GETS OLD FOR THESE GUYS:

Clash Nears in the Senate on Legislation Helping Unions Organize (STEVEN GREENHOUSE, 6/20/07, NY Times)

Senate Democratic leaders moved Tuesday to force a vote on organized labor’s top legislative priority, a bill that would make it far easier to organize workers. But Republican leaders vowed to kill the measure, voicing confidence that they could defeat a motion cutting off debate and bringing it to a vote this week. [...]

Business groups have mounted a big fight against the bill, with one organization, the Center for Union Facts, spending $500,000 on newspaper and broadcast advertisements this week alone.

Though the bill has cleared the House, passage there was on a vote of only 241 to 185, far from veto-proof. And with Senate Democrats and the chamber’s two independents holding just 51 seats, well short of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate, Republicans and their business allies are predicting that that they can prevent even an up-or-down vote on the measure.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, filed a petition Tuesday night for a vote later in the week to prevent Republicans from blocking consideration of the bill. But Randel K. Johnson, a vice president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, said: “The cloture petition will not succeed, and the bill will be pulled. That will be the end of that for two years.”

Can't be bad for GOP fundrasing to make business peer into the Democratic abyss.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 20, 2007 8:10 AM