The largest U.S. federation of labor unions said on Wednesday it is freezing contributions to federal candidates in next year’s elections as it waits to see the outcome of key trade votes.
The AFL-CIO said in a statement defeating legislation to streamline the passage of trade deals through Congress was a top priority.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said on Tuesday unions would keep a tally of how lawmakers voted on key trade issues and would make trade an issue in the 2016 campaigns, which cover all House of Representative seats and one-third of the Senate. [ID:nL1N0WC232]
The AFL-CIO is a major donor to Democrats, who are keen to win back control of Congress in 2016.
While public sector unions are busy happily bankrupting hardworking, taxpaying citizens in America’s most liberal states, their private sector cousins have been struggling as of late. Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin have all become freedom-minded right-to-work states in the last few years and Big Labor as a whole is not amused that its power to force people to join them is dwindling. Scott Walker alone has been tossing them around like a stuffed chihuahua for four years. It hasn’t been fun.
So they’re acting out.
Understandably, they want a return on the significant investment they make in the Democrats and now they’re going to make them earn the money in advance. The Democrats now finally have a unique opportunity to stand behind their hysterical rhetoric about MONEY IN POLITICS and eschew this pay for play gambit.
Or they can go on being the duplicitous bottom feeders they’ve always been when it comes to campaign cash.
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