Why Are Dems Cutting Union Oversight?

Carter Wood caught another piece, this one from John Fund:

In the past six years, the Office of Labor Management Standards, or OLMS, has helped secure the convictions of 775 corrupt union officials and court-ordered restitution to union members of over $70 million in dues. The House is set to vote Thursday on a proposal to chop 20% from the OLMS budget. Every other Labor Department enforcement agency is due for a budget increase, and overall the Congress has added $935 million to the Bush administration’s budget request for Labor. The only office the Democrats want to cut back is the one engaged in union oversight …

Whatever sums are spent on union disclosure reports appear to be a good investment. Unions held $22 billion in assets in 2005, and you’d think that a modest enforcement budget, representing less than 0.003% of that amoun,t shouldn’t be the only target for cuts by budget appropriators.

This is an issue near and dear to our hearts — as well as those of the hundreds of thousands of union members who visit UnionFacts.com to access such information. This is a blatant political payoff to union bosses who shrink from virtually any form of accountability.