Congress can deal a blow to government union bosses
Congress can use the budget reconciliation bill to save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by refusing to pay the salaries of government employees who, instead of doing their jobs, are doing business for their unions.
Through a practice known as 'official time,' union agents can draw a government salary even when they are off lobbying Congress, or spending 100 percent of their time working for a labor union.
In 2019, the year before President Joe Biden ordered the Office of Personnel Management to stop tracking and reporting official time, employees across the federal government were paid $135 million to do 2.6 million hours of union work while 'on the clock' at their government jobs.
These are the last people who deserve taxpayer money. Despite being paid with tax dollars, these government union bosses are blatantly partisan. They're so used to being above the law that they see no reason to represent the views of most Americans. That's why their contributions to candidates favor Democrats 20 to 1.
And of course, government employee unions have staged massive protests in Washington to combat the Trump administration's efforts to reform the federal bureaucracy.
Even though unions are third-party, nongovernmental organizations with strong political biases, federal officials are required by law to negotiate with them over their agencies' staffing policies.
Public policy should be made by representatives elected by the American people. It is undemocratic for those policies to instead be made through forced 'negotiations' between elected officials and unelected union bosses.
Union officials should never have been given control over the government workforce. So it's good that President Trump signed an executive order ending union bargaining at several federal agencies. If Congress won't ban federal unions altogether, it can deal a significant blow to these groups by taking away the massive taxpayer subsidies that help fund their operations.
The Protecting Taxpayers' Wallets Act, sponsored by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), forces unions to pay back the official time they consume, plus the value of other perks they receive, such as free government office space.
If union bosses want to set up shop in government buildings, and use government employees as union organizers and lobbyists, they should do it on their own dime. Reversing the flow of taxpayer money into union coffers is a revenue decision, making Ernst and Perry's language eligible for the budget reconciliation bill, which, unlike most legislation, can pass the Senate with just 51 votes.
The language should be included in the reconciliation bill, but union bosses have allies in government, so its inclusion is in jeopardy. It suffered an early defeat after Rep. Perry introduced an amendment in the House Oversight Committee that would have placed his language in the budget.
A majority of the committee's members joined with Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), who said that she opposed Perry's amendment because she believes that campaigning for candidates like herself is an appropriate activity for government workers.
'Making sure that you are going to get somebody who is going to serve in a seat that is going to make sure that you can be protected … as far as I'm concerned, that is agency business,' she explained.
Crockett is wrong. Government employees should not be in the business of deciding who should serve in a congressional seat and campaigning to elect that person.
House and Senate leaders should insist that the language in the Protecting Taxpayer Wallets Act be added to the budget reconciliation bill, so that the public no longer has to fund the political activity of union bosses.
Jace White is the director of federal affairs at the National Right to Work Committee.
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