-By Warner Todd Huston
David Denholm of the Public Service Research Council gives us the update on the OLMS:
On Thursday, October 18 the Senate voted 47 to 46 to kill an amendment by Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions to the 2008 Labor-HHS Appropriation Bill, H.R. 3043, that would have restored funding for the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) to its 2007 level.
Two Republican (In Name Only) Senators, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Ted Stevens of Alaska, voted with the Democrats to defeat this amendment.
The OLMS is the only government agency charged with monitoring labor union finances and rooting out union corruption. It has been doing an excellent job. So excellent, in fact, that the Union Bosses’ friends in Congress are reducing its funding, despite the fact that they found reasons to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more than the President requested in other parts of the Labor-HHS appropriation bill.
Now is the time to begin urging President Bush not only to veto H.R. 3043 but, just as importantly, to mention the need to restore OLMS funding in his veto message
My fear is that if he doesn’t make a strong point of this the Democrats will cut a few hundred million dollars of fat from the bill and return it to him without restoring OLMS funding.
Folks, we need to get our representatives in Congress to understand that we won’t allow the Democrats to cover for union corruption anymore. If the Dems want to claim that they are the ones that want to eliminate the so-called “culture of corruption,” then we must hold their feet to the fire and actually live up to their words.
But, the defunding of the OLMS that the Dems are involved in certainly makes the lie to their claims to care about fighting corruption!
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Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, men’snewsdaily.com and americandaily.com among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a guest on several radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston