On
Friday,
December 7, 2007, Senators Judd Gregg (R-NH), Edward Kennedy (D-MA)
and Tom Harkin (D-IA) submitted the Public Safety Employer-Employee
Cooperation Act (S. 2123) as an amendment to the Farm, Nutrition,
and Bioenergy Act of 2007, H.R. 2419. The amendment, S.Amdt.3830,
was one of only forty amendments – out of hundreds offered – that
the Senate leadership allowed to be considered.
Senators Gregg, Kennedy and Harkin felt strongly that the
Collective Bargaining bill had a good chance of passing the Senate
as part of the Farm bill.
NAPO
spent the next week lobbying Senators to ensure that we had the
60 votes necessary to pass the amendment when it was scheduled
to come up for a vote on the morning of Friday, December 14.
We were even able to arrange for all of the Senate Democratic
Presidential Candidates (Senators Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Hillary
Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, and Christopher Dodd) to fly back
Thursday night after their debate in Iowa in order to vote Friday
morning in favor of the amendment.
However,
the night before the scheduled vote, Senators Gregg, Kennedy and
Harkin were forced to withdraw their Public Safety Collective
Bargaining amendment. Despite all of NAPO’s efforts and overwhelming support for the amendment, Senator Jim DeMint
(R-SC) did everything in his power to ensure that it did not pass. Senator DeMint offered second degree amendments
that would have significantly weakened our amendment and he threatened
to filibuster it, making a clean passage of the Collective Bargaining
amendment impossible.
While
it is unfortunate that we did not get the chance to have S.Amdt.3830
voted on, we did discover that the Public Safety Employer-Employee
Cooperation Act has widespread, bipartisan support in the Senate.
We feel that if Senator DeMint had not forced it to be
withdrawn, there was a strong possibility that it would have passed.
NAPO played a large role in the passage of the Public Safety Employer-Employee
Cooperation Act, H.R. 980, in the House of Representatives on
July 17, 2007. The fight to
pass the collective bargaining bill in the Senate is now more
focused and NAPO is putting all of its efforts into ensuring its passage. Next year is a new Congressional session and
we are optimistic that we can build on our broad bipartisan support
and move the bill successfully in 2008.
If
you have any questions or would like further information on the
Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act and NAPO’s efforts, please
contact the NAPO office at (703) 549-0775 or info@napo.org.
