SOURCE:
"Considering how clearly its own actions almost daily betray the Biden administration’s unswerving loyalty to special interests in general and organized labor in particular, you’d expect those in positions of leadership to work a little harder at covering their tracks.
But thanks to a toxic combination of contempt for most Americans’ intellect and their supreme confidence in the left-leaning mainstream media’s ability to suppress the truth, Biden’s henchmen scarcely even bother these days.
Vice President Kamala Harris, for example, in a recent interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, couldn’t resist the temptation to riff on a wide variety of subjects about which she knows embarrassingly little.
Regarding the so-called Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act — Biden’s multi-billion-dollar giveaway to unions — she gushed, “We, of course, support the PRO Act. And it’s because, again, we believe very strongly, and I believe very strongly, that if we’re going to support workers, if we’re going to support their productivity, we should support collective bargaining. We should support their ability to organize.”
Left unsaid was that the right to organize has been enshrined in law for generations, and no serious person has suggested challenging it.
In fact, the PRO Act would abolish right-to-work laws in 27 states, which would go far beyond “supporting their ability to organize” and instead force them to pay dues to a union they don’t support.
And why would we expect otherwise? After all, unions gave the Biden-Harris campaign more than $76 million in political contributions during the 2020 election cycle.
Harris was only getting started touting the administration’s pro-union actions that have hurt the American people.
“I head up the labor council for the administration,” she said. “We worked for an entire year on building up recommendations – 70 – for the president, who ultimately accepted the recommendations, about what we can do with one of the largest workforces in the country, which is the federal workforce, to ensure that we support collective bargaining rights and that we allow workers to organize.”
The list of recommended executive actions includes:
easing rules regarding union access to employees, including private-sector employees on federal property;
cracking down on “anti-union campaigns” or “persuader activity” by employers; and,
requiring that new offshore wind-leasing projects, interior construction contracts, and other infrastructure projects are constructed using union labor.
These special protections for Big Labor come on top of already-costly decisions the Biden-Harris administration made in its first year in office, including shutting down the Keystone pipeline and requiring new green energy projects while prohibiting other traditional energy strategies — to say nothing of raising the hourly minimum wage for federal contractors to $15.
And yet, regarding skyrocketing consumer prices, Harris observed, “There are a lot of factors that contribute to inflation. We’re looking at the price of gas going up. And a big part of that is (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s war.”
In keeping with the strategy of misdirection, the answer assumes Americans have forgotten that the economy was already cratering months before Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February.
Since the Biden-Harris administration settled into the White House in January 2021:
the consumer price index jumped 8.5 percent
between March 2021 and March 2022;
gas prices have shot up 44 percent;
beef prices have risen by 16 percent;
chicken and milk are up 13 percent; and,
staples like coffee and eggs are up 11 percent more.
As if that wasn’t enough to raise your blood pressure, the Freedom Foundation recently uncovered $36.1 million in COVID relief loans that were distributed to ineligible labor unions in the first year of the program.
Teachers’ unions and advocacy organizations received more than $6.8 million in these COVID funds, while the Teamsters received $3.35 million, government employee unions received more than $1.5 million, and AFL-CIO organizations received more than $450,000.
When Chuck Schumer (D-NY) took control of the U.S. Senate in January 2021, the Biden administration, with the full support of Congress, expanded the eligibility to include those labor unions that weren’t intended to have received taxpayer loans when the program was initially created.
These taxpayer dollars were meant for businesses in need, so people didn’t have to lose their jobs or livelihoods. Or so we we’re told by the Biden-Harris administration. Instead, this money circled back to the union bosses who gave them millions for their campaign.
The Biden administration just keeps making good on the president’s campaign promise to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.”
Regarding the so-called Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act — Biden’s multi-billion-dollar giveaway to unions — she gushed, “We, of course, support the PRO Act. And it’s because, again, we believe very strongly, and I believe very strongly, that if we’re going to support workers, if we’re going to support their productivity, we should support collective bargaining. We should support their ability to organize.”
Left unsaid was that the right to organize has been enshrined in law for generations, and no serious person has suggested challenging it.
In fact, the PRO Act would abolish right-to-work laws in 27 states, which would go far beyond “supporting their ability to organize” and instead force them to pay dues to a union they don’t support.
And why would we expect otherwise? After all, unions gave the Biden-Harris campaign more than $76 million in political contributions during the 2020 election cycle.
Harris was only getting started touting the administration’s pro-union actions that have hurt the American people.
“I head up the labor council for the administration,” she said. “We worked for an entire year on building up recommendations – 70 – for the president, who ultimately accepted the recommendations, about what we can do with one of the largest workforces in the country, which is the federal workforce, to ensure that we support collective bargaining rights and that we allow workers to organize.”
The list of recommended executive actions includes:
easing rules regarding union access to employees, including private-sector employees on federal property;
cracking down on “anti-union campaigns” or “persuader activity” by employers; and,
requiring that new offshore wind-leasing projects, interior construction contracts, and other infrastructure projects are constructed using union labor.
These special protections for Big Labor come on top of already-costly decisions the Biden-Harris administration made in its first year in office, including shutting down the Keystone pipeline and requiring new green energy projects while prohibiting other traditional energy strategies — to say nothing of raising the hourly minimum wage for federal contractors to $15.
And yet, regarding skyrocketing consumer prices, Harris observed, “There are a lot of factors that contribute to inflation. We’re looking at the price of gas going up. And a big part of that is (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s war.”
In keeping with the strategy of misdirection, the answer assumes Americans have forgotten that the economy was already cratering months before Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February.
Since the Biden-Harris administration settled into the White House in January 2021:
the consumer price index jumped 8.5 percent
between March 2021 and March 2022;
gas prices have shot up 44 percent;
beef prices have risen by 16 percent;
chicken and milk are up 13 percent; and,
staples like coffee and eggs are up 11 percent more.
As if that wasn’t enough to raise your blood pressure, the Freedom Foundation recently uncovered $36.1 million in COVID relief loans that were distributed to ineligible labor unions in the first year of the program.
Teachers’ unions and advocacy organizations received more than $6.8 million in these COVID funds, while the Teamsters received $3.35 million, government employee unions received more than $1.5 million, and AFL-CIO organizations received more than $450,000.
When Chuck Schumer (D-NY) took control of the U.S. Senate in January 2021, the Biden administration, with the full support of Congress, expanded the eligibility to include those labor unions that weren’t intended to have received taxpayer loans when the program was initially created.
These taxpayer dollars were meant for businesses in need, so people didn’t have to lose their jobs or livelihoods. Or so we we’re told by the Biden-Harris administration. Instead, this money circled back to the union bosses who gave them millions for their campaign.
The Biden administration just keeps making good on the president’s campaign promise to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.”
He just didn’t specify that meant labor union bosses making six-figure salaries while the average American family struggles to put food on the table and gas in their car."
Author Hunter Tower is the Pennsylvania state director at the Freedom Foundation. www.FreedomFoundation.com
