flip flop: Bachmann disavows labor bill she sponsored cites 'bad information' #p2 #tcot

from http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0811/Bachmanns_bad_information.html

Michele Bachmann has disavowed her 2007 sponsorship of a bill granting collective bargaining rights to firefighters and police officers.

Bachmann, one of the most outspoken critics of collective bargaining rights in the Wisconsin battle earlier this year, was one of 280 co-sponsors of the  legislation was the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act of 2007, which passed in the House but died in the Senate after belated but fierce organized conservative opposition.

Bachmann spokeswoman Alice Stewart told me Bachmann signed onto the bill because she was given 'bad information' and has since reversed her position:

When the congresswoman first went to Washington in 2007 she was presented this bill and was given bad information on the implications on the bill for firefighters and first responders. When she examined the bill, she came to the conclusion that it violated the 10th amendment, hurt the right to work of first responders in all 50 states, and hurt the ability of first responders to perform their jobs (especially volunteer fireman). When she came to that conclusion, she sent a letter to her constituents explaining why she would oppose the bill, rather than wait for the bill to come up for a vote.

Greg Mourad, a spokesman for the anti-union National Right to Work Committee, forwarded over a copy of Bachmann's letter, which is dated December 2010:

When this legislation was presented, its authors knew it flew in the face of some of the core principles by which we should govern. But they presented it as a bill to support our first responders, as legislation to uphold our public servants.

In actuality, the bill will burden our public servants and systems. Upon close review of the legislation, I have refused to cosponsor it and will not vote for it.

It's a vote that, with an intensely anti-labor mood in the Republican Party, could come back to haunt her. But Mourad said Right to Work  is "not worried" about Bachmann, because she's admitted the vote was a mistake.

UPDATE: Michael Crowley passes on an anonymous flier from South Carolina attacking her on the issue.