Rising Unemployment Hinders Economic Recovery

With unemployment rising around the country, President Obama ignores the stimulative effects of entrepreneurial capital and continues to tout "reforms" that will choke off private investment and discourage labor growth. Among his dangerous policies is an unwavering support of labor unions, including a recent order supporting project labor agreements (see Lou Dobbs clip below). A new executive order by President Obama "encourages government bureaucrats to adopt discriminatory, union-only project labor agreements for any 'large-scale construction project' – defined as any project costing over $25 million – and thus discriminate against the 92.5 percent of private sector workers who have chosen for a wide variety of reasons not to join a union." According to National Right to Work, "Big Labor stands to rake in literally hundreds of millions of dollars in new forced-dues revenue seized straight out of workers’ paychecks, whether they support the union or not." Obama has enacted this executive order despite the fact that his own economic advisor, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, conducted research concluding that: "Another cause of long-term unemployment is unionization. High union wages that exceed the competitive market rate are likely to cause job losses in the unionized sector of the economy. Also, those who lose high-wage union jobs are often reluctant to accept alternative low-wage employment."

Once again, Obama is either confused by the economic realities or ignores the painful environment that confront him while pandering to his cronies and political supporters.