Maine State Senate Sells Soul, Gives Away Spine

Imagine if you are a Democrat in the Maine State Senate. You are in the minority. You have to work with a Governor who is, to put it in the best possible words, one that you have little to agree with on.

However your fellow Senators from the right are working hard to be respectful and senatorial. For the most part the relationship between the two sides is one that is more cordial than anyone had a right to respect. Even as Republicans try to work with the Governor they remind me of when I had a boss that was a bit blustery and prone to overstatement. After he would make a pronouncement at a meeting, as soon as he would leave the room, I would issue a clarification as to what he meant to say. And because he had a personal one on one charisma that we all would like to have he got away with his off the cuff mistakes.

So when the Democrats and the Republicans came to an agreement on how to handle the state budget, in particular the controversial General Assistance budget, one had to feel good. After all the final vote was 35 to 0, unanimous, how often is anything unanimous in today's world of politics.

The Governor when he received the budget said he would not sign it. Most assumed he would just let it become law by not signing or vetoing it within ten days. That way he could claim he did not approve, but would not set himself up for an embarrassing override of his veto in the Republican run State Senate.

What happened from here is anyone's guess. LePage used the line item veto on the General Assistance portion of the budget. The Republicans who run the Senate declined to reconvene to act on the veto. Worse yet the vote on if they should reconvene was held by secret ballot. So we went in the space of a short few days from a 35 to 0 approved compromise on General Assistance to a a line item veto upheld by secret ballot of the Republican majority.

As a Democrat what have you learned. You have learned that any compromise agreement if not worth the paper it is written on.

If you are a Democrat in the State Legislature you should and can dislike Paul LePage, or at least his policies. Do not however make the mistake of blaming him for this one. We know what LePage is. The problem is that last week in their cowardly caving in to the Governor and their betrayal of their compromise we also learned alot about what the Republicans in the State Senate are.

Cowardly and lacking scruples would be a good place to start a description.