Card Check Passed in Lame Duck Session?

Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) says he may be able to pass the Card Check bill during the Lame Duck session.

Tom Harkin

Here's a Senator unashamed to admit he is "maneuvering" for shameful legislation:

"To those who think it's dead, I say think again," Harkin said on the liberal Bill Press radio show. 

"We're still trying to maneuver," the Iowa Democrat added, explaining that if Democrats can't move the bill in its entirety, they might try to pass key parts of the union-organizing legislation individually.

The Iowa senator also raised the prospect on Thursday or trying to pass parts of the card-check bill during a lame-duck session of Congress at the end of the year.

"A lot of things can happen in a lame-duck session, too," he said in reference to EFCA. 

A "lame-duck" session refers to the time Congress is in session after an election, during which members who might have retired or lost reelection still serve for roughly two months. Contentious legislation like EFCA is rarely moved during such a session, though the logic behind trying to move the labor bill during a lame-duck Congress is that lawmakers who might have opposed it for political purposes might be more inclined to support it.

Card Check is a way for Unions to deny a private ballot to Union voters. In other words, Union leaders will know exactly how you vote in Union matters. Card Check removes the "federally supervised" private ballot privilege. Read more about Card Check here, and if you come up with a democratic reason for stealing an employee's right to a private vote, let me know.

The real explanation for a "lame duck" vote is this: the politician is not coming back to Congress and so abandons all ethics, integrity and concern for their own constituency and votes opposite to how they would have voted had they been returning to Capitol Hill. In other words, they sell out. Nice.