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Redstate...
Dozens of Republicans Vote for
Handouts to Big Labor
Posted by Daniel Horowitz
Tuesday, June 14th
Big
Labor GOPers supporting Obama’s
administrative power grabs, crony capitalism, wage controls, and
fleecing of
taxpayer.
Yesterday,
the House passed the
largely non-controversial Military Construction/Veterans Affairs
Appropriations
(MilCon) bill for FY 2012.
Unfortunately, it is these non-controversial
bills which provide a safe
haven for meretricious policy initiatives through the rapid fire
amendment
process. While
everyone was focused on
presidential politics, the House passed an amendment forcing government
contractors to use labor unions on federal construction projects. Oh, and like most bad
legislation, this
amendment passed by one vote, with the help of 27 Republicans.
In
2009, Obama used his signature
power grab tool; an Executive Order, forcing all private companies to
sign a
project labor agreement (PLA) in order to bid on federal construction
projects. PLA’s
compel the private contractor
to use only unionized workers for the perspective project. This executive power grab
is nothing more
than an election payback to big labor, which would ostensibly purloin
the
taxpayer with forced collective bargaining for all public construction
projects.
This
malevolent executive order would
also discriminate against non-union workers.
Keep in mind that only a small percentage of
private sector construction
workers are unionized. As
Congressman
John Culberson (R-TX) said on the House floor, “So the Obama
administration
through this executive order is attempting to unionize any private
company in
America that wants to do business with the federal government.” Then again, Democrats have
been paying out their
union cronies with the blood and sweat of American taxpayers for years.
Last
month, Republicans on the
Appropriations Committee inserted language in the MilCon bill to
nullify any
executive mandate for project labor agreements.
Ironically, it was a Republican, union shill
Rep. Steve LaTourette, who
proposed an amendment to strike out the anti PLA section from the bill. He rounded up 26 other
Republicans and helped
Democrats preserve Obama’s pro-union discrimination by 204-203!
In
addition to fleecing the taxpayers
with a union giveaway, 54 Republicans voted down an amendment (Justin
Amash-
AMDT 413) to prohibit the use of funds to enforce Davis-Beacon
prevailing
wages. This Great
Depression era
pro-labor law inflates the cost of public contracts by forcing the
government
to pay highly subjective “prevailing” wages to those who contract with
the
federal government. Rep.
Amash and
others have been seeking to use approps bills to strike out these wage
controls
from government contracts. Each
time,
there were enough rouge Republicans to defeat his amendments. The amendment to the
MilCon bill failed
178-232, with the help of way too many Republicans.
Yesterday’s
“non-controversial” House
votes are quintessential examples of the need to shed light on the
banal, yet
consequential, proceedings of Congress.
We simply cannot sit idle and assume that a
Republican-controlled House
will scuttle pernicious legislation without some “outside help” from
the Tea
Party. Sadly, this
holds true even for
those bills which offer handouts to the largest bankrollers of the
Democrat
Party.
Read
it at Redstate
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