So, America may be speaking out, but Republicans in Congress sure aren’t listening. They want to put special interests back in the driver’s seat in Washington.
President Barack Obama [1]
The decisive influence of special interests has made a mockery of our representative government. Both parties are guilty of pandering to pressure groups, endorsing legislation that benefits supporters at the expense of the majority. It is no revelation that special interests call the shots in Washington, so President Obama’s midterm obsession with the influence of special interests on the GOP is difficult to stomach, given the unprecedented influence his administration has allowed the Democratic Party’s power base.
Democrats have always been up-front and transparent about their endorsement of organized labor. Before Mr. Obama set foot in the Oval Office, House Speaker Pelosi assigned a number to the potential union votes that might be gained from a bill that would hand over private businesses to unions by allowing supervised ballot voting to be replaced with a simple majority sign-up:
Today, 57 million American workers say they would join a union if they had the chance – to be part of the effort to keep America number one….
The Employee Free Choice Act puts democracy back in the workplace, so that the decision to form a union can be made by the employees that the union would represent. [2]
California’s Representative George Miller sponsored this bill in 2003, and like the DREAM Act, it has surfaced periodically ever since, last appearing in April 2009. Chairman of the Committee on Education & Labor, Mr. Miller was a strong proponent of the $10 billion midterm election gift to teachers’ unions included in “The Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act.” Miller’s home state benefitted hugely from the bill. California was the only state projected to receive over $1 billion in funding, and also won the prize for most teachers’ jobs guaranteed by taxpayer funds. [3]
After the president kicked off 2010 by hosting a meeting with union leaders unhappy about health care reform’s excise tax on their high-premium plans, a get-together that segued into the deferral of the tax until 2018, the year has been riddled with legislative nods to Democratic interests. Organized labor has been at the top of the favorites list, but immigrant rights groups are also demanding their due. Despite the failure of Democrats to push comprehensive amnesty legislation forward, the DREAM Act slithered onto the Senate floor once again at the behest of a majority leader fighting a tough election campaign in a state with a large Hispanic population.
One of the Obama administration’s most outlandish maneuvers for special interests came during the GM and Chrysler bailouts, in which TARP money was, arguably, used to fund union benefits programs:
If you trace the funds, TARP money was employed by the New Chrysler and New GM to purchase assets of the old auto makers, yet a substantial portion of the equity in the new entities was transferred to the VEBAs [Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Associations – manage funds for union retirement and health care programs] and, thus, not retained for the benefit of the American taxpayers (who funded the TARP), or shared with other creditors of Old Chrysler and Old GM. Accordingly, it’s hardly a stretch to conclude that TARP funds were transferred to the UAW and the VEBAs after being funneled through New Chrysler and New GM. [4]
The result: preferential treatment for union special interests at the expense of the middle class:
In other words, why did the United States government spend tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money to bailout employees and retirees of the UAW to the detriment of other non-UAW employees and retirees – such as retired school teachers and police officers from the State of Indiana – whose pension funds invested in Chrysler and GM indebtedness? [5]
While heaping blame for the recession on the GOP and the financial sector, the president continues to endorse bank bailouts. The $30 billion small business lending fund in Mr. Obama’s latest jobs-creation straw man was represented to the voters as something other than a community bank bailout, even though more responsible government agencies have warned us that the fund will not stimulate lending or create jobs.
An AFL-CIO political education committee sits solidly in first place on the Federal Election Commission’s list of the top 50 PACs, sorted by cash on hand, at the end of December 2008. [6] The list’s top ten PACs include a United Auto Workers group, an American Federation of Teachers political education committee, and even a group for unionized postal workers. These are the special interests that put Mr. Obama in office, and we have been paying the dues ever since. The GOP has their special interests, but the president has his, too. His might even be bigger.
1..Weekly Address. September 25, 2010.
2..Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi: Employee Free Choice Act Ensures Right to Organize, Which is Essential to Prosperity for All Americans. March 1, 2007.
3..Committee on Education & Labor. Hon. George Miller, Chairman. Teachers Jobs Saved by H.R. 1586, the Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act: state-by-state. August 5, 2010.
4..Congressional Oversight Panel. December Oversight Report. Taking Stock: What Has the Troubled Asset Relief Program Achieved? Transfer of TARP Proceeds and Retirement Saving of Indiana School Teachers and Police Officers to the UAW and the VEBAs. December 9, 2009. Footnote 490. p. 142.
5.. Congressional Oversight Panel. December Oversight Report. Taking Stock: What Has the Troubled Asset Relief Program Achieved? Transfer of TARP Proceeds and Retirement Saving of Indiana School Teachers and Police Officers to the UAW and the VEBAs. December 9, 2009. p. 142.
6..Federal Election Commission. Top 50 PACs by Cash on Hand. December 31, 2008.
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