Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker threatens lay offs if Democrats don't vote on state budget

Wisconsin's union-busting Republican goveor threatened Tuesday to lay off hundreds of public sector workers if the Democratic lawmakers who split the state don't retu and vote on his proposed budget.

Gov. Scott Walker, who plans to deliver his budget address Tuesday, said the state will miss a chance to refinance its debt and force him to start writing pink slips.

The Democrats remained defiant. They said Scott is making an empty threat because his budget proposal already calls for massive job cuts to help close a projected $3.6 billion shortfall in the two-year budget.

"Goveor Walker is not being honest with the taxpayers," state Sen. Jon Erpenbach said from his Chicago hideout. "He does not have to lay people off today and he knows that."

Ahead of his speech, Walker tried to clear the state capitol of protesters occupying the hallways. A judge's order prevented him from doing so.

Walker is determined to balance the books by squeezing $330 million in concessions from teachers and other public employees - but not the cops and firefighter unions.

The unions in Walker's sites agreed to what is essentially a pay cut, but they balked when the goveor went after their long-held right to collective bargaining - touching off an uprising that has galvanized the national labor movement.

To deny the GOP majority the quorum needed to ram that change through, Erpenbach and the 13 other Democratic state senators fled the state and paralyzed their state govement.

The Democrats refused to come back until Walker agreed to leave collective bargaining rights alone.

President Barack Obama has called Walker's move an assault on unions.

So far Walker has refused to compromise.

Walker's obstinacy has made him a GOP darling, but new polls suggest most Americans side with the workers.

A Pew Research Center poll released Monday found 42% sided with the unions and 31% sided with Walker. The latest New York Times-CBS poll found Americans oppose Walker's efforts by a margin of almost two to one - 60% to 33%.

Shortly after Walker took office in January, he and his GOP allies pushed through two business tax breaks aimed at generating more jobs that added $100 million to the state debt.

"There's no evidence this has happened since the January tax cuts were approved," Jack Norman of the non-partisan Institute for Wisconsin's Future think tank told The Daily News. "Taxes are a fairly minor factor in companies' employment decisions."