Maggie's Farm

One of the sectors who won’t directly benefit from the tax deal -- which evicted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is demanding revisions even though it hasn’t even been written – is about 5.7 million state and local government workers and about 600,000 federal workers. They don’t pay Social Security taxes, as they contribute to government pension plans, so they won’t benefit from the proposed 2% reduction in employee Social Security tax.

The New York Times reports, “’We are aware of it,’ said Gregory King, a union [American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees] spokesman, ‘and we are discussing it with the appropriate leaders in Congress.’”  The NYT mentions that union alone “spent $90 million to help elect Democrats during the last election cycle.” Add in the other campaign spending by other government employee unions, like about $50-million from the SEIU, and the grand total is in the hundreds of millions, almost all to Democrats.

Hey, I’ve got an idea: Let the government unions cut their dues from government employees, instead of spending the dues on electing Democrats, even though many of the unions' members vote Republican.