The Patriot Post® · Biden Bails Out Big Labor With $36B in Taxpayer Funds

When it comes to propping up Big Labor, Joe Biden’s generosity knows no bounds. That’s because he’s spending other people’s money.

Last week, for example, he committed $36 billion in taxpayer funds to shore up a mismanaged Big Labor pension fund until at least 2051. The bailout will eliminate the need for severe cuts to the retirement incomes of about 350,000 Teamsters Union employees and retirees nationwide. At the same time, as the great Thomas Sowell has pointed out, this bailout will eliminate one of the most effective mechanisms for teaching people to make better decisions — namely, the suffering of consequences for having made bad decisions.

“The money for the Central States Pension Fund is the largest amount of federal dollars ever used to bail out a pension plan,” reports The Washington Times. “It comes out of the $86 billion in taxpayer money allocated to faltering pension plans in Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package last year.”

Your tax dollars at work.

“Thanks to today’s announcement,” said Scranton Joe, “tens of thousands of union workers in states like Ohio, Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, and Missouri, can go to bed tonight knowing the pension they worked so damn hard for is there for them when they need it.”

We must’ve missed Biden’s announcement about having shored up the retirement accounts of those tens of millions of everyday Americans who’ve gotten hammered in the stock market this past year. Because we could’ve sworn we heard him say during his inaugural address, “I will work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as those who did.”

The Teamsters bailout rubs a lot of folks the wrong way, but perhaps none more so than Mark Mix. As president of the National Right to Work Committee, Mix’s organization fights for the freedom to work without forced union participation. “Once again,” said Mix, “Biden is paying back his Big Labor allies to the detriment of taxpayers and the 90% of American workers who have chosen not to affiliate with a union.”

Mix also sees through the dubious coronavirus connection. “Long before COVID,” he said, “union officials have been mismanaging plans like the Teamsters Central States fund, which makes it especially offensive that the pandemic has been used as the excuse for this bailout.”

The timing of this massive taxpayer-funded Christmas gift to Big Labor is anything but coincidental. As Fox News reports: “Biden’s announcement came a week after he negotiated a labor agreement with railroad companies that did not include paid sick leave. Four unions insisted that more paid sick days must be added to the deal, including the Teamsters’ maintenance union, but Congress passed the plan without extra sick time in order to avoid a strike.”

In short, it was a make-up call.

As our Nate Jackson noted last week, Biden had railroaded those union workers by calling on Congress to pass strike-preventing legislation, thereby stiff-arming the same people whose support had long been so critical to the Democrats’ electoral success. (Labor unions donated $27.5 million to Biden’s campaign in 2020.)

As Jackson noted, the avoidance of a rail strike was that rare instance of Democrat interests actually aligning with American interests.

As for the infuriating bailout of the Teamsters’ pension: not so much. This one is purely political, and it puts the interests of the Democrat Party above those of the nation.

Unfortunately, this likely won’t be the last time a Democrat president rides to Big Labor’s rescue. Like other pension funds, “Central States has been plagued with a variety of problems,” The Washington Times reports. “Rising costs, a weaker stock market, and a drop in the number of active workers participating in the fund have crippled its revenue.”

How many poorly managed plans are we talking? According to a report by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation: “Out of roughly 1,400 insured multi-employer pension plans, 124 have reported that they will run out of money within 20 years. Those 124 pension plans represent about 1 million workers.”

It’s hard to imagine the calculus that would allow Joe Biden or some future Democrat president to have bailed out 350,000 Teamsters while refusing to bail out a million of their Big Labor brethren down the road.

Elections have consequences — especially for taxpayers.