Joe Biden Resuscitates Big Labor Bailout Scheme

Phony ‘Relief’ Bill Would Soak Taxpayers in Right to Work States

Ever since the extraordinary lockdowns imposed by government officials as a means of containing the COVID-19 pandemic crashed the U.S. economy early last year, Big Labor and its allies have been trying to capitalize on the crisis.

Today they are still trying to use the widespread economic hardship caused by COVID-19 and the political response to it as an excuse to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars from hard-pressed federal taxpayers to Big Labor-dominated states and localities.

These states and localities are fiscally struggling today primarily because of decades of budgetary mismanagement.

And now it appears clear that recently-inaugurated Democrat President Joe Biden will do everything he can to help forced-unionism politicians in states like Illinois, New York and California get a bailout from taxpayers in relatively fiscally responsible states, most of which have Right to Work laws.

Biden Team Ready to Shut Down Senate Debate to Ensure Bailout Happens

A massive union-boss bailout like last year’s so-called “HEROES” Act, which swept through Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) House, but was stalled in the then-GOP controlled Senate, is now one of Mr. Biden’s principal goals.

And the President has already made it clear he and his Capitol Hill cohorts are ready to use the budget reconciliation process to cut off a Senate debate so that his Big Labor bailout can be adopted without a single GOP vote in the 50-50 chamber. 

“To union-boss politicians who are determined to ‘never let a good crisis go to waste,’ the COVID-19 recession is an opportunity,” explained National Right to Work Committee Vice President Greg Mourad. 

“The connection between forced dues, government-sector union monopoly bargaining, and out-of-control spending is clear.

“In state after state where union-label politicians are elected thanks to union monopolists’ money and manpower, they return the favor with reckless spending promises that help union bosses at the expense of taxpayers and workers.

“Now the same politicians who have run their states’ budgets into the ground to please Big Labor are demanding that taxpayers from other states foot most of the bill.”

Among the Nine States With The Worst Fiscal Records, Eight Are Forced-Unionism

As journalist Steven Malanga reported a year before COVID-19 emerged, the nine states that had the worst records from 2003-17 of “spending more than they generate in taxes, fees and federal grants” are New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, California and Delaware.

Eight of these states are forced-unionism. And Kentucky, the only one that isn’t, did not adopt its Right to Work law until 2017.

“Bailing out forced-dues sinkhole states would only embolden the politicians and union bosses who generated so much debt in the first place,” said Mr. Mourad.

“Legislators, executives, and other government officials in these states will then continue making spending promises they can’t keep at the behest of union bosses, counting on the rest of us to pay for them.”

After the House rubber-stamped the “HEROES” Act last year, thousands of Right to Work supporters contacted their politicians in Congress to demand that they reject any special handouts to Big Labor in COVID-19 relief legislation. 

And in the final days of the 116th Congress, a COVID-19 bill passed both chambers and was signed by then-President Trump after Nancy Pelosi agreed to remove no-strings-attached state and local funding from the legislation.

Right to Work Supporters Ready to Fight Even Harder Than Before to Stop Bailout

Now, with union-label Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) reigning as the new Senate majority leader and Joe Biden in the White House, union bosses and their allies in gubernatorial mansions and state legislatures around the country are betting on a bailout.

“This latest bailout attempt, like Big Labor’s Pushbutton-Unionism Bill [see page one of this Newsletter edition for more information], illustrates just how far politicians like Joe Biden will go to line the pockets of union bosses,” noted Mr. Mourad.

“Federal taxpayers, especially those living in Right to Work states with relatively few unfunded liabilities, shouldn’t be forced to pay for promises made to union bigwigs by the likes of Govs. J.B. Pritzker [D-Ill.], Andrew Cuomo [D-N.Y.], and Gavin Newsom [D-Calif.].

“The Committee and its members are ready to fight even harder in 2021 than we did in 2020 to make sure that doesn’t happen.”