Tom Harkin

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is supposed to be an objective finder of fact for the U.S. Congress. Last year it weighed in on the controversy over aid to students attending for-profit colleges with a critical study which appeared to cast aspersions on the practices of some 15 for-profit colleges. The study was ballyhooed by the Obama Department of Education that supported a double standard of regulations: one for taxpayer-supported community colleges and a much tougher one for the for-profit schools.

When the Obama administration this past spring forced the bankrupt General Motors and Chrysler Corp. into virtual public receivership, officials justified the action as crucial to the survival of the auto industry and indeed the entire economy. Yet this unprecedented action has had several downsides, one of the less heralded of which has been the sudden vulnerability of current and retired employees who don't belong to a union. Case in point: the roughly 15,000 nonunion retirees of auto parts manufacturer and former GM subsidiary Delphi Corporation on the verge of losing their pension, health insurance and life insurance benefits.

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as Union Corruption Update has noted repeatedly, is a misnamed piece of federal legislation. Its sole ulterior purpose is an expansion of union power at the expense of dissenting employees and employers. And despite the fact that supporters appear willing to strip the measure of its highly controversial "card check" component, the bill (H.R. 1409, S. 560) remains coercive in intent. That's because its less-heralded binding arbitration provision remains. And arbitration, as supporters envision things, would authorize the federal government to write (or rewrite) employment contracts from scratch.

The Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress may soon gain another valuable ally in their effort to radically expand government. On March 26, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced legislation that ends the restrictions on the ability of legal services organizations, funded by the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), to file ideologically-motivated lawsuits. In addition, Harkin's bill, "The Civil Access to Justice Act of 2009," nearly doubles the LSC budget from $390 million to $750 million. If Harkin's bill is enacted, thousands of legal services lawyers will unleash a barrage of lawsuits in the nation's federal and state courts to advance a liberal political agenda.