No bigger lie ever passed any politician's lips than the one that issued Thursday to justify House legislation depriving Florida's teachers' unions of the legal right to payroll deduction of their members' dues.

The lie is that the unions are to blame for Florida's burgeoning teacher shortage by favoring senior teachers over beginners in negotiations for salaries and working conditions. Though there isn't an atom of evidence to support that viewpoint, the Committee on State Administration claimed it as truth in passing the bill on a 3-2 party-line vote. The orders came from Speaker Tom Feeney's office.

Debate, such as it was, took less than half an hour and was cut off with opponents still waiting to be heard. They had been given only two days' notice on the bill, which the committee had secretly worked out with the Mackinac Center, a right-wing, anti-union think tank in Michigan. Majority Leader Mike Fasano of New Port Richey, Feeney's hatchet man, was lurking nearby with Feeney's written authority to vote if his vote were needed. It wasn't.

One would have to go back nearly half a century, to the political turbulence over desegregation, for another moment so shameful to Florida; for another example of legislation so profoundly vindictive and unconstitutional. Underscoring the malice and unfairness, the bill also would apply the GOP "paycheck protection" formula to teachers' unions that manage to get the dues checkoff restored through collective bargaining. The teachers -- but only the teachers -- would be denied the use of their money for political purposes, lobbying or anything else that interest groups must do these days to survive.

Though the House has often seemed out of touch with reality this year, it is doubtful that even the most fanatical of its Republican leaders expect this wicked piece of work to be taken seriously by the Senate. What other purposes, then, might it serve beyond degrading and demoralizing the teachers?

Propaganda, for one. The bigger the lie, they must believe, the more easily people will fall for it. So ignore the real reasons why senior teachers are quitting and young ones can't be found -- reasons such as meager pay, crowded classrooms and, above all, the public disrespect whetted by the irresponsible actions and malignant neglect of cheap politicians. Ignore the fact that Florida's beginning teachers earn nearer the national average than Florida teachers do overall. Ignore the shambles being made of higher education. Pretend that it's all the teachers' fault, for belonging to unions, and hope that there are voters witless enough to believe it.

The scandal is not that such a bill will become law, for it won't, but that the House of Representatives would even consider it.

It would miss the point to blame Feeney. The blame belongs to the Republican majority -- among them Heather Fiorentino, Rob Wallace, Gus Bilirakis, Larry Crow, Kim Berfield, Leslie Waters, Frank Farkas, John Carassas, Sandy Murman, Chris Hart, Ken Littlefield, Johnnie Byrd, Nancy Argenziano and David Russell -- on whose behalf he mocks the public's intelligence and abuses its trust. He is their creation and their responsibility. The time has come for them to say, enough.

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