Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., rode to the rescue of unions last night by killing an amendment that would have weakened the power of the National Labor Relations Board.
Nelson reportedly provided the deciding vote against an amendment to a Senate bill funding the NLRB. The amendment would have prevented the NLRB from requiring companies to relocate factories or production lines.
By defunding any effort by the NLRB “to order an employer . . . (or seek an order) . . . to rescind any relocation” that a company undertakes, the amendment would have interdicted the NLRB’s suit to require Boeing Co. to move a factory from the right-to-work state of South Carolina to Washington State, where Boeing has struggled with union strikes.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, proposed the amendment – along with Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. – during a Senate Appropriations Committee meeting because, as he put it in a statement released to The Washington Examiner, why “should unelected bureaucrats have the ability to shut down a billion dollar plant?”
After fellow Democrat Sen. Mark Pryor, Ark., crossed party lines to support the anti-NLRB measure, Nelson was “wavering” on the issue but ultimately voted against the langauge, resulting in a tie vote that blocked the amendment from going into the bill.
The vote follows a pattern of Nelson, known as a moderate, providing the swing vote for Democratic agenda items. Nelson cast the deciding 60th vote for Obamacare in exchange for a “Cornhusker Kickback” that would have had the federal government pay for the resulting expansion of Medicare in Nebraska. The kickback was ultimately negated after the bill’s passage.
Graham’s office told The Washington Examiner that he hopes to bring the measure to a vote on the Senate floor.
Rep. Tim Scott, R-SC, who sponsored a bill to curtail the NLRB that passed the House of Representatives last week, told The Washington Examiner that if Senate Democrats refuse to bring a measure such as the Graham amendment or his bill to a vote, “it will be a wonderful opportunity to have a 2012 narrative of [Democrats’] inability to work towards common sense.” Scott thinks such opposition could compromise the campaigns of “the 23 Senators up for reelection who happen to be Democrats.”
You can see the text of the amendment below.
