Michigan Liberal

The Freep this morning provides an excellent illustration of why being bipartisan is less important than simply doing the right thing. Their editorial is being hailed all across the political Facebook internets, from Mike Cox to Andy Dillon, and congratulates those Democratic members of the House who voted to support legislation pushing teachers towards early retirment.

16 Democrats bucked their traditional allies in the labor movement and voted in favor of a school retirement plan that offered a sweetener for teachers to retire this year and imposed a new 3% deduction on everyone remaining next year to help fund retiree health care costs.

The measure passed with 56 votes in total, the rest supplied by Republicans -- just enough to pass in the 110-member House of Representatives. The state's largest teachers union, the Michigan Education Association, was not pleased, and some of the lawmakers have gotten hints or outright threats that they will not get further support -- be it money or volunteers to pass out literature -- from that traditional bulwark of Democratic campaigns.

Profiles in courage? In some cases, yes. Stiff backbones? Definitely.

The problem? The program has been a failure, evidence for which has been coming in for the last two days. Heck, the Freep itself reported it on Friday.

I don't, as such, have a special problem with offering early retirements to clear high salaries off local school district salary rolls and to create openings for fresh college graduates. But, let's at least agree that a program that fails to meet the 50 percent savings level originally touted cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called a success. Let's take that a step further and put simply that legislators who supported it supported a program that failed. Let's conclude by pointing out that under these circumstances that the Freep is saying that it is less important to succeed than it is to fail in bipartisan fashion.