Holdout vs Line Item Veto

I was thinking about WI Gov.'s line item veto the other day - about how it might complicate any sort of deal in the ongoing labor dispute.

Thankfully, The Atlantic's Jordan Ellenberg has spared you my inane thoughts by writing about that very subject.

According to a staffer at the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the legislators are well aware of the partial-veto problem in the current negotiations. Writing a "veto-proof" appropriations bill in Wisconsin is essentially impossible. The Senate could break the collective bargaining provisions off the rest of the bill, making it non-appropriations and thus sheltering it from the governor's black Sharpie -- but that would mean passing a budget repair bill without any mention of collective bargaining at all, a level of independence of which Senate Republicans, with the possible exception of Schultz, have shown no hint. In the end, the Senate would probably have to rely on a handshake agreement with Gov. Walker to leave the bill intact. At this point, what is a handshake from the Governor worth? That depends whether you think the governor would openly defy a bipartisan deal to get his way on collective bargaining. The partial veto is wildly undemocratic, but it's a Wisconsin tradition. I think Walker would probably do it; and it's not clear he would pay any serious political price.

Something tells me that a guy who "thought about" planting troublemakers in the crowd, planned to lure opposition senators to talk for the sole purpose of tricking them into giving him a quorum to pass his bill AND is positioning to lock protesters out of the WI capitol building is not going to have a lot of restraint.