To most Americans, the fact that our federal budget deficits are expected to total roughly $3.9 trillion in FY 2024 and FY 2025 combined is a scandal.
But to union-label Democrat Vice President and 2024 presidential nominee Kamala Harris, along with the small legion of Big Labor bosses upon whom she is relying to power her campaign this fall, that $2 trillion-a-year in deficit spending represents a wonderful opportunity and a huge financial windfall.
It is furnishing federal agencies with vast sums of new money to carry out the Biden-Harris Administration’s mandate to browbeat and/or bribe businesses into submission to monopolistic unionism and to ensure that millions of additional workers are forced to bankroll Big Labor as a job condition.
The Biden-Harris EPA and Department of Energy (DOE), which are now in the process of doling out hundreds of billions of dollars in “green” energy grants authorized by a union-label Congress in 2021 and 2022, are key cases in point.
Biden-Harris EPA grants, for example, require would-be recipient companies not to exercise their legal right to oppose efforts to unionize their employees and, in many cases, also grant recognition to a union as employees’ monopoly-bargaining agent without first allowing an employee secret-ballot vote.
Perhaps no other union boss has been the recipient of more taxpayer-funded Biden-Harris largesse than Shawn Fain, the camera-chasing president of the historically corrupt United Auto Workers (UAW) union.
A July 11 Biden-Harris DOE press release exulted in the fact that $1.7 billion in grants announced that day to support the manufacture of electric vehicles [EVs] and their supply chain had been intentionally allocated to firms that would use their subsidies to “create and retain” thousands of “union jobs.”
In response, Mr. Fain commended Biden-Harris bureaucrats for making it “clear to employers that the EV transition must include strong union partnerships” with UAW bigwigs like him.
While stumping for Ms. Harris, Mr. Fain has cited blatantly political “investments” such as the $335 million allocated by the Biden-Harris Administration to convert a so-far still idle UAW-controlled plant in Belvidere, Ill., into an EV facility as reasons why workers should back the Harris-Walz ticket in November.
National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix commented:
“Unfortunately, as happy as Shawn Fain and the rest of the UAW union hierarchy are about the rich payoffs they are getting as part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s regulatory push to force auto firms to transition rapidly from gas-powered vehicles to EVs, most rank-and-file UAW members aren’t benefiting.
“Effectively left with no choice by the Biden-Harris EPA and like-minded Big Labor state politicians and their appointees, auto companies like Stellantis, GM and Ford are ramping up EV production practically as fast as they can.
“But the sad fact is, these three companies can’t manufacture EV’s profitably, and won’t be able to do so for the foreseeable future.
“The predictable consequence has been thousands of layoffs of workers who had been assembling gas-powered vehicle as these companies scramble to cut costs to compensate for their mounting losses from EV production.
“On August 9, for example, Stellantis announced plans to lay off up to 2,450 UAW-‘represented’ workers at Warren Truck Assembly in Michigan.”
Mr. Mix continued:
“Both economic theory and long experience tell us that workers, whether they are unionized or union-free, typically fare better when their employer must answer to consumers, not politicians.
“Moreover, while the ultimate outcome of the 2024 presidential election is very much in doubt, polls indicate workers across America and in battleground states like Michigan specifically are properly skeptical about the ‘politicians know best’ economic message now being promoted by the Harris-Walz ticket.
“There are clearly vast numbers of UAW-‘represented’ workers who believe Shawn Fain et al. should have forthrightly opposed the Biden-Harris EPA regulations forcing vehicle companies to switch to EVs instead of lobbying successfully to exploit the rules to get billions of dollars in new federal subsidies.
“Those workers’ views are worthy of respect. Not one of them should be forced by law to fork over money to Mr. Fain in order to remain employed.”
This article was originally published in our monthly newsletter. Go here to access previous newsletter posts.
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