You heard candidate Obama say, “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” Now you know he was speaking about unions—the lifeblood of his party and the friends of a community organizer.
The currency of community organizers and union leaders is the same—people. The more votes you can deliver, the more favors you expect in return. That’s why we’re seeing the Obama administration race to increase the size of the government pie—and thereby increase the number of public sector union employees—at the expense of you and me, the taxpayer.
Since 1946, deficit spending has never been higher than 6% of GDP. Obama will average an estimated 10.25% over the last two years. In fact, the post-WWII two-year average peaked during the Reagan years at 5.4% of GDP.
Government tax receipts during the Reagan years averaged around 18% of GDP thanks to his pro-growth agenda. Contrast that with the Obama administration, which is collecting around 14.8% of GDP and in just two years has increased government spending to 25% of GDP, another post-WWII record. These are not records Americans want broken.
Unions spent a record $171.5 million during the midterm elections as their ranks have grown by 198,000 since 2008. That’s quite a thank-you, wouldn’t you say? Meanwhile, the private sector has lost around eight million jobs over that span.
Union ranks have grown to make up 37% of public-sector employees. Their wallets have grown in kind. Federal workers make an average of $123,000 a year including benefits. That’s twice as much as private-sector workers. It takes two to three private-sector workers to pay for the benefits of one public-sector worker. It wasn’t always like this.
Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man, writes about unions in her article “How Government Unions Became So Powerful” on the Council on Foreign Relations website. She points out that beginning in 1912 the Lloyd-LaFollette Act gave federal workers the right to organize. It did not give them the right to militant collective bargaining.
Even Franklin Roosevelt was against the militant practice of collective bargaining by public employees. In 1937, he wrote a letter to Luther Steward, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, saying that such tactics “have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees.”
In 1962, President Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988 permitting collective bargaining by federal employees. Shlaes writes, “Widely seen as a gift to George Meany, the AFL-CIO head who helped Kennedy win the White House, the executive order was also a gift to government unions, both because it widened federal membership and because it signaled national approval of unions for state and local employees.”
Fast-forward to the most recent midterm election, where AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka was seen all over the campaign trail. He’s been a guest of President Obama’s at the White House. He’s pushing for higher taxes on the rich or successful. As reported by Politico, he was lobbying the White House and supporters in Congress to hold only one vote—on extending the middle-class tax cuts—and force Republicans to vote against them, even if it meant the tax-cut fight would spill into next year, well after the breaks expire December 31. “I believe that is the best solution, so we will fight for it,” Trumka said. This would be a devastating blow to successful small businesses and entrepreneurs, and another Obama victory over the private sector.
You are seeing how the people of France and England are reacting to austerity measures. The evolution of big government quickly turns into a revolution when the entitled are forced to face the music. American taxpayers need to speak up or become subdued. President Obama has chosen his side—unions. A civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, and just as well-funded.
