My heart breaks: labor unions feel stabbed in the back by #Obamacare
**Posted by Phineas
And by The One, himself. Like Moe Lane, I find it a bit difficult to choose between laughing and pointing at the naive union leaders who didn’t think Barack Obama would throw them under the bus, or just quietly smiling while they reap the whirlwind of their foolishness and greed:
Labor leaders who have spent months lobbying unsuccessfully for special protections under the Affordable Care Act warned this week that the White Houseβs continued refusal to help is dampening union support for Democratic candidates in this yearβs midterm elections.
Leaders of two major unions, including the first to endorse Obama in 2008, said they have been betrayed by an administration that wooed their support for the 2009 legislation with promises to later address the peculiar needs of union-negotiated insurance plans that cover millions of workers.
Their complaints reflect a broad sense of disappointment among many labor leaders, who say the Affordable Care Act has subjected union health plans to new taxes and mandates while not allowing them to share in the subsidies that have gone to private insurance companies competing on the newly created exchanges.
After dozens of frustrating meetings with White House officials over the past year, including one with Obama, a number of angry labor officials say their members are far less likely to campaign and turn out for Democratic candidates in the midterm elections.
βWe want to hold the president to his word: If you like your health-care coverage, you can keep it, and that just hasnβt been the case,β said Donald βD.β Taylor, president of Unite Here, the union that represents about 400,000 hotel and restaurant workers and provided a crucial boost to Obama by endorsing him just after his rival Hillary Rodham Clinton had won the New Hampshire primary.
Taylor and Terry OβSullivan, president of the Laborersβ International Union of North America, laid out their grievances this week in a terse letter to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), saying they are βbitterly disappointedβ in the administration.
Be sure to read the whole thing there; it’s not just Obamacare the union leaders are angry about — their whole agenda seems to have found its way under the bus. Card check, too, thankfully, has been left to die. And what really bugs them, I think, is that Obama won’t abuse his power to help them. Everyone else, it seems, sure. But unions that literally in some cases emptied the treasury to help get him elected twice? Nada. As a consequence, the article points out, this could lead to less than enthusiastic turnout and campaign support in November.
Darn.
Moe’s right. Time to sit back, enjoy, and not get in the way of our opponents turning on each other. (1)
Footnote:
(1) Other than to point out, gently, in a friendly, sympathetic manner to an upset private union member that there is a better way, and that it starts by not listening to their union bosses and voting against the Democrats, both of whom got him or her into this mess in the first place.
(Crossposted at Public Secrets)